Gold and silver pieces as well as bones and pottery from 1,500 years ago were discovered in Lake Titicaca by underwater archaeologists, a researcher said Tuesday.

"We found 2,000 objects and fragments," Christophe Delaere, the Belgian co-director of the Huinaimarca Project that unearthed the items, said at a ceremony in La Paz.

It's no secret humans have been having sex for millennia -- but recently discovered cave art suggests they were doing it in the Americas much earlier than many archeologists believed.

A new exhibit in Brazil showcases artifacts dating as far back as 30,000 years ago -- throwing a wrench in the commonly held theory humans first crossed to the Americas from Asia a mere 12,000 years ago.

In a year with no clear favorites, Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami appears to be the front-runner to win the Nobel Prize for Literature this week.

Murakami, known across the globe for works such as "Norwegian Wood" and "1Q84", heads the list at bookmaker Ladbrokes with 5/2 odds.

Sales of contemporary art rose 15 percent in the year to June as the worldwide market bounced back from the global financial crisis, according to research published on Monday.

Artprice, a French company which tracks art sales worldwide, said the strong performance compared with a 2.4 percent contraction in the overall art market and reflected the growing investment value of works by artists born after 1945.

Even as she lay dying, Edith Piaf carefully controlled the image that made her a star -- and 50 years after her death a legend -- in her native France and around the world.

At 47 and dying of liver cancer, Piaf ruled that only her personal photographer, Hugues Vassal, would be allowed to capture the images of her final days.

Opera maestro Giuseppe Verdi, whose bicentenary is being celebrated on Thursday, is "still alive" in Italy -- especially for the inhabitants of his native village of Busseto.

The world famous composer's family home is surprisingly humble. On a crossroads, the grocery owned by his parents is on just one floor and has a handful of rooms, including a small stable.

A rush of publishing start-ups and ever new ways to lure readers in an industry with Amazon breathing down its neck will be a central theme at the world's biggest book fair, opening in Germany on Wednesday.

Faced with competition from the online giant, publishers face an "imperative to be big", organizers of the Frankfurt Book Fair say, pointing to this year's merger to create Penguin Random House.

With artwork sprawled on queen-sized beds, hung in front of television sets and even placed on toilet counters, Hong Kong's Asia Contemporary Art Show has an unusual take on what constitutes an art gallery.

Hosted in a luxury hotel, the bi-annual fair caters for emerging artists hoping to break into global markets and the unorthodox venue is an attempt to reduce costs in a city fast becoming known as an international arts hub but where sky-high rents pose a challenge for artists and galleries.

Best-selling British author Alexander McCall Smith is to pen a new version of Jane Austen's classic novel "Emma" with a 21st century twist, his publisher announced on Friday.

McCall Smith, who has sold over 20 million copies of his "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series, said being commissioned to re-write Austen's 1815 original was "like being asked to eat a box of delicious chocolates".

The biggest exhibition of Matisse's paper cut-outs -- a technique the French artist invented in his final years -- is going on show in London, the Tate Modern gallery announced Friday.

"Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs" brings together around 120 works made between 1943 and his death in 1954.