An intense and controversial restoration of the last great work by Leonardo da Vinci goes before the public Thursday at the Louvre Museum, revealing "The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne" in the full panoply of hues and detail painted by the Renaissance master 500 years ago.

The 18-month-long restoration of the painting that Leonardo labored on for 20 years until his death in 1519 will go a long way to raising "Saint Anne" to its place as one of the most influential Florentine paintings of its time and a step towards the high Renaissance of Michelangelo.

Aerosmith has reunited with longtime producer Jack Douglas and the band says it will release a new album in three months.

Steven Tyler said Aerosmith was finishing two final songs for the album, its first since 2004's "Honkin' on Bobo." Joined Wednesday by Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer at a Los Angeles mall, Tyler revealed three track titles: "Legendary Child," ''Beautiful" and "Out Go the Lights." Earlier in the week, the band announced that its 18-stop "Global Warming Tour" begins June 16 in Minneapolis.

Ernest Hemingway shows a tenderness that wasn't part of his usual macho persona in a dozen unpublished letters that became publicly available Wednesday in a collection of the author's papers at the Kennedy presidential library.

In a letter to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich written in Cuba and dated February 1953, Hemingway wrote of euthanizing his cat "Uncle Willie" after it was hit by a car.

Insurgents ambushed a NATO coalition supply convoy in a mountainous area of western Afghanistan, sparking a three-hour firefight in which an Afghan soldier, five Afghan security guards, and 14 attackers were killed, officials said Thursday.

Najibullah Najibi, a spokesman for the Afghan National Army's western region, said the battle raged Wednesday along a highway regularly used by coalition supply trucks in Bala Buluk district of Farah province.

Struggling cellphone maker Nokia Corp. launched its first smartphone for China on Wednesday, looking to the world's biggest mobile market to help drive its 1-year-old turnaround effort.

Nokia said its Lumia 800C will be supported by China Telecom Ltd., one of the country's three major state-owned carriers.

North Korea says it aims to estimate crop production and analyze natural resources when it launches a satellite on a long-range rocket next month.

The United States and South Korea view the launch as a cover for testing long-range missile technology.

Vesselina Kasarova's repertoire ranges from Donizetti to Wagner. Critics rave over her voice and her character depictions are the gold standard for young singers aspiring to opera stardom.

Asked recently if she would again become a singer from her present perspective at the top, she shrugged.

Some workers in Sweden have found a rather offbeat way to spend their lunch hour. Actually, on-beat is more like it.

Dripping with sweat and awash in disco lights, they dance away to pulsating club music at Lunch Beat, a trend that started in Stockholm and is spreading to other cites in Europe.

Hilton Kramer, the former chief art critic at The New York Times and founding editor of The New Criterion magazine, has died. He was 84.

Kramer's wife Esta said he had been suffering from a blood disease, and died early Tuesday. He had been in an assisted living facility in Harpswell, Maine.

Like zombies, human beings can't get enough of brains.

A new London exhibition explores that fascination, displaying everything from mummified Egyptian cerebral matter to slices of Albert Einstein's brain in the story of our quest to understand what's inside our skulls.