Firing its 16-inch guns in the Arabian Sea, the U.S.S. Iowa shuddered. As the sky turned orange, a blast of heat from the massive guns washed over the battleship. This was the Iowa of the late 1980s, at the end of its active duty as it escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran-Iraq war.

Some 25 years later, following years of aging in the San Francisco Bay area's "mothball fleet," the 887-foot long ship that once carried President Franklin Roosevelt to a World War II summit to meet with Churchill, Stalin and Chiang Kai Shek is coming to life once again as it is being prepared for what is most likely its final voyage.

It is a hot, cloudless morning on a hillside on the outskirts of Kathmandu and dozens of nuns arrange themselves into lines around a golden Buddhist shrine.

In unison, each slams a clenched fist into their opposite palm, breathes deeply and waits, motionless in the rising heat.

Last year, as the battle over the Ivory Coast's presidency raged in Abidjan's streets, Aboudia locked himself in his studio and painted images of mangled bodies, ghostly soldiers and child coffins.

The 28-year-old painter has risen to fame on the global art scene with his raw depictions of the 10-day battle for Abidjan, the climax of the post-election power struggle between presidential rivals Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo.

A Leica camera prototype made in 1923 fetched 2.16 million euros ($2.79 million) at auction on Saturday, setting a new world record for a camera.

The camera, an exemplar of the pre-production Leica 0-Series, had been expected to go for between 600,000 and 800,000 euros and bidding started at 300,000 euros at the Galerie Westlicht in Vienna.

Sao Paulo, Latin America's financial hub, cements its status as the region's cultural mecca this weekend with the Eighth edition of its modern art fair that is attracting a growing foreign presence.

Officially known as SP-Arte, the country's biggest contemporary art fair is drawing a record 110 galleries, including 27 from abroad, at the Biennal pavilion designed by Brazilian star architect Oscar Niemeyer.

"The Slav Epic" by Alfons Mucha, a Czech Art Nouveau gem, went on display in Prague on Thursday, fulfilling the wish of the artist who spent 18 years on the series of paintings from 1910 to 1928.

The cycle of 20 allegories tracing the history of the Slavic people and inspired in part by mythology was unveiled at Prague palace where it was first exhibited in 1928, on the 10th anniversary of Czechoslovak independence.

The earliest known Mayan calendar has been found in an ancient house in Guatemala and it offers no hint that the world's end is imminent, researchers said Thursday.

Rather, the painted room in the residential complex at Xultun was likely the place where the town scribe kept records, scrawling computations on the walls in an effort to find "harmony between sky events and sacred rituals," said the study in the journal Science.

Glittering atop a succession of royal crowns, the 35-carat "Beau Sancy" diamond has been witness to 400 years of European history.

Now the jewel, passed down through the royalty of France, England, the Netherlands and Prussia, could leave its noble past behind when it is sold at auction in Geneva next week.

Some of the most famed Shiite clerics of modern times have gathered together in a modest room under a religious school in Najaf in central Iraq -- as wax figures, waiting to be put on display.

The 20 likenesses depicting people who studied, lived or were born in Najaf, most of them clerics, are arrayed around the walls of the carpeted room, with fans protecting them from the heat.

The Maxxi museum of contemporary art in Rome was placed under the special administration of Italy's culture ministry on Thursday, amid fears ballooning debts and funding cuts could force it to close.

A ministry press release said architect Antonia Pasqua Recchia has been appointed to take over the reins of the museum, which was designed by the Anglo-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid and opened its doors only two years ago.