Judges narrowly acquitted Socrates, the philosopher whose teachings earned him a death sentence in ancient Athens, in a retrial Friday billed as a lesson for modern times of revolution and crisis.

Socrates spoke himself at his trial in the fourth century BC, but this time in his absence, a panel of 10 U.S. and European judges heard pleas by top Greek and foreign lawyers at the event at the Onassis Foundation in Athens.

Lithuania has concluded the first phase of a study aimed at identifying over a thousand Lithuanians suspected of killing Jews in the Baltic state during Holocaust, a senior researcher said Friday.

Terese Birute Burauskaite, head of the Vilnius-based Genocide and Resistance Research Center, told Agence France Presse she will make a full list of suspected war criminals available to justice authorities.

Italian police on Thursday arrested the director and the curator of the oldest library in Naples for stealing hundreds of books and manuscripts from their own collection.

"The Girolamini Library has been the victim of a criminal plot," said Naples public prosecutor Giovanni Mellilo.

The UAE may be the Gulf's most liberal Arab state but two local women have caused a stir with an online campaign against the "repulsive" habit of Western women to reveal too much flesh in public.

Hanan al-Rayyes and Asma al-Muheiri say their "UAE Dress Code" campaign is designed to promote "respect for the country's culture" among foreigners and raise awareness about what locals consider appropriate dress and behavior.

It has long served as the spiritual home of New York's French-speaking Catholics, but the Church of St. Vincent de Paul is nearing its end as the faithful grow fewer and the building lies in disrepair.

But Manhattan's last francophone parish, where French singer Edith Piaf got married in 1952, is resisting a decision taken five years ago by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York to shutter it for good.

A flotilla of tall ships from around the world sailed Wednesday into New York Harbor, kicking off annual Fleet Week celebrations and marking the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

The first masts visible over the horizon at the bay entrance early Wednesday belonged to the "Juan Sebastian de Elcano," a four-mast Spanish navy schooner.

South Africa will inaugurate the new Soweto Theatre Friday in the country's most famous township, a project that aims to bring world-class drama to the heart of the black community.

The 150-million-rand (14-million-euro, $18-million) playhouse is a celebration of whimsical architecture made up of three shiny cubes -- one blue, one red and one yellow -- built on land that would likely have become another of the many shantytowns ringing the economic capital Johannesburg.

South Asia's love of literature festivals has spread to the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which features in many an exotic travelogue but is pretty much a blank space on the global literary map.

The Mountain Echoes Festival held this week in the Bhutanese capital Thimpu is part of a growing South Asian circuit that currently comprises thriving literary festivals in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The Arab Center for Architecture (ACA), the Arab Image Foundation (AIF), the Association for Arabic Music (IRAB), and the Cinémathèque de Tanger are partners in initiating the Modern Heritage Observatory project (MOHO), which aims to advocate for the preservation of modern cultural heritage – with an emphasis on photography, music, architecture, video and film – in the Middle East and North Africa.

As they struggle for sustainability, cultural heritage actors in the MENA region seek to raise awareness on the need to support and improve the preservation of modern cultural heritage among political and institutional sectors and the general public. The project partners have come together to mobilize for joint action to impact policies and legal frameworks, and to generate political commitment towards modern cultural heritage.

Archaeologists have uncovered a tiny clay seal inscribed with the word "Bethlehem" in what is believed to be the earliest evidence for the existence of the ancient biblical city.

"The first ancient artefact constituting tangible evidence of the existence of the city of Bethlehem, which is mentioned in the Bible, was recently discovered in Jerusalem," a statement Wednesday from the Israel Antiquities Authority said.