Traditional Japanese Washoku cooking methods, millenia-old Georgian wine-making techniques and the Mediterranean diet were among 14 new entries added to UNESCO's list of "intangible heritage" in need of being preserved.

Envoys picked the new listings at a meeting in the Azerbaijani capital Baku, UNESCO said in a statement late Wednesday.

A Norman Rockwell painting titled "Saying Grace" has sold in New York for $46 million, the highest price paid for any work sold at a U.S. art auction and for a work by the illustrator.

Sotheby's auction house says two people on the telephone bid against each other for nine minutes before the hammer came down Wednesday. The buyer's identity hasn't been disclosed.

Commuting has never been so arty -- taking the metro in Naples is an increasingly cultural experience with its ever-expanding network of "art stations" created by international designers.

For the price of a 1.3 euro ($1.8) metro ticket, tourists and locals have access to 16 stations filled with 200 colorful works of art -- including sculptures, murals, mosaics and floor decorations.

Angel Ayala has never been a big fan of museums. Blind since birth, the high school student says the exhibits are so sight-dependent that he can't enjoy them.

But he's making an exception for the Penn Museum, an archaeology and anthropology center in Philadelphia that offers touch tours for the blind and visually impaired. Ayala can now feel the eroded limestone of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus and the intricate hieroglyphs on the statue of a pharaoh.

Still stumped for a Christmas present? Then what about an exquisite $1 million Picasso for the living room, yours for just $135 at an online charity raffle.

The perfectly preserved Cubist gouache was bought by an anonymous donor from a New York gallery and given to a charity working to save the ancient city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.

Nigeria's government on Wednesday gave striking university lecturers a temporary reprieve, extending a deadline for them to return to work or be sacked.

Members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), who walked out on July 1 leaving hundreds of thousands of students in limbo, had been given an ultimatum to get back behind their desks by Wednesday or be dismissed.

The century-old home of Egypt's mummies and King Tutankhamun's treasures is trying to make the best out of the worst times of political turmoil. But the Egyptian Museum is taking a hammering on multiple levels, from riots on its doorstep to funding so meager it can't keep up paper clip supplies for its staff.

The museum, a treasure trove of pharaonic antiquities, has long been one of the centerpieces of tourism to Egypt. But the constant instability since the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak has dried up tourism to the country, slashing a key source of revenue. Moreover, political backbiting and attempts to stop corruption have had a knock-on effect of bringing a de facto ban on sending antiquities on tours to museums abroad, cutting off what was once a major source of funding for the state.

Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, renowned for his revolutionary poetry and outspoken criticism of Arab political leaders, died on Tuesday at the age of 84, friends said.

"Ahmed Fouad Negm passed away. He was 84," publisher Mohammed Hashem told Agence France Presse.

The new novel by literary superstar Haruki Murakami was Japan's biggest-selling book of 2013, the nation's largest distributor said.

The novel, about a man struggling to come to terms with events in his past, beat off competition from the flood of self-help books and how-to manuals published in Japan every year to come top of the list released Monday by Nippon Shuppan Hanbai.

French artist Laure Prouvost on Monday won Britain's Turner prize for contemporary art for her video installation set among a mock-tea party setting, it was announced at a ceremony in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

"The jury thought her work was outstanding for its complex and courageous combination of images and objects in a deeply atmospheric environment," said an official press release from Tate, the award's partners.