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Picasso, Matisse, Monets Stolen from Dutch Museum

Seven paintings by artists including Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet were stolen from a museum in Rotterdam in an early-hours heist, Dutch police said Tuesday.

The theft at the Kunsthal museum is one of the largest in years in the Netherlands, and is a stunning blow for the private Triton Foundation collection, which was being exhibited publicly as a group for the first time.

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Decade on From Riots, Modi Eyes India's Main Stage

He was in power during India's worst religious riots since independence and remains a hate figure for many of the country's Muslims.

But Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat state, insists his region is now a role model for the rest of India as he positions himself for a widely expected tilt at the premiership.

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Prelate: Pope John Paul I Was Definitely Not Poisoned

Pope John Paul I, who reigned for just 33 days in 1978 before dying of a heart attack, was definitely not poisoned, the prelate advocating for sainthood for the late pontiff said on Tuesday.

Monsignor Enrico dal Covolo said in an interview with the TGCOM blog that the documents and 167 testimonies he had collected for a report to be submitted to the Vatican on Wednesday dismissed "any suspicion of a murder" of the pope.

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Brazil Eyeing Public Service Quotas for Blacks

President Dilma Rousseff wants to introduce public service quotas for black Brazilians as a way to repay a historic debt for centuries of slavery and discrimination, a government source said Monday.

The official told AFP that the government is considering adopting a quota system for new public service contracts and exams to benefit Afro-Brazilians, who make up the country's majority but remain at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder.

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Canadians Flock to Rome for Canonization of Mohawk

A Mohawk woman will on Sunday become the first Native American to be canonized a Catholic saint, in a ceremony in the Vatican 300 years after her death, and 1,500 fellow Canadians will be there.

Kateri Tekakwitha, known as "Lily of the Mohawks," was born in 1656 in what is now Auriesville in the U.S. state of New York, but died while serving the church in Kahnawake in what is now Canada's Quebec province.

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Fly-By Art? Gagosian Opens Paris Airport Gallery

In a globalized art market, what better place for a gallery than an airport? Thus reasoned U.S. art mogul Larry Gagosian, who this week opens a cavernous new art space right inside Paris's main private air hub.

Designed by star French architect Jean Nouvel in a 1950s warehouse in Le Bourget north of Paris, Gagosian's new gallery, his 12th worldwide and second in Paris, opens Friday to coincide with the capital's FIAC contemporary art fair.

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Gastronomy Nourishes Spain's Gourmet City

Ham with brie, wild mushroom croquettes, cured-meat ravioli: gourmet cooking has put this Basque town on the gastronomic map, drawing visitors from around the world.

Now its culinary assets -- which include more Michelin stars per square meter than anywhere else in the world, and the world's first university of gastronomy -- are nourishing it in the economic crisis.

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Women Artists Take Over Seattle Art Museum

Inspired by the Pompidou Center in Paris, which for nearly two years removed all the men's art from its modern galleries, the Seattle Art Museum is letting women take over its downtown building this fall.

Lovers of art by men can still get their fill in the museum's Renaissance, Asian and Native art galleries, but those who want to explore art from this past century will be studying the contribution of women to photography, video, painting and sculpture.

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Treasure Trove of African Music Gets Digital Treatment

More than 80 years ago Hugh Tracey made his first recordings of African music and earned himself a reputation as a madman who sallied into the bush with people playing drums.

That was in 1929, today his unique archives have been digitalized and used as teaching aids in two new school textbooks, realizing his life dream of preventing the music from dying out.

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Sufi Shrines Targeted in Tunisian Salafist Upsurge

Houcine looks around nervously before entering the tomb in the village of Menzel Bouzelfa, one of the Sufi shrines that have become targets for Tunisia's increasingly assertive Salafists.

On September 14, hundreds of radical Islamists angered by a U.S.-made film mocking their religion attacked the U.S. embassy in Tunis and a neighboring American school in a day of violence that left four people dead and dozens wounded.

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