Even before speaking with Mam Khalil, it is clear he loves photographs -- they cover almost every inch of his cafe in northern Iraq, providing windows into the country's history.

The pictures on the walls go all the way to the ceiling, overlooking patrons as they sip tea, smoke cigarettes or fill their spoons with mastaw, a yogurt-like dish served in bowls with ice.

The number of French Jews emigrating to Israel rose nearly four-fold in the first quarter of the year and could touch a record in 2014, a Jewish organization said Monday.

The Jewish Agency for Israel, a global body responsible for the immigration and absorption of Jews into Israel, said 1,407 people left France for Israel between January and March against 353 people a year earlier.

The presumed mastermind of a brazen art theft from a French Riviera museum involving four paintings by Monet, Sisley and Breughel denied any role as he went on trial on Monday.

The Miami-based Bernard Ternus, who is in his sixties, was sentenced in the United States to five years in prison in 2008 over the theft at Nice's Jules Cheret museum a year earlier.

Laurel Canyon wasn't much to look at — a few modest bungalows and log cabins crammed between an occasional faded mansion that had been left over from the days when it was a secluded, semi-rural retreat for Hollywood's silent-movie stars.

And yet from the quiet of the densely wooded canyon came a music revolution that would change popular culture.

At the foot of the Vosges mountain range in northeastern France, a key battleground during World War I, a mine-clearance team is cautiously inspecting a cylinder of rusted metal nestled in a stone case covered with mould and barbed wire.

"Look at that, it looks like an old stovepipe but there are several kilos of explosives in there, potentially active," said team leader Didier Schahl as he heaved the huge munition out of the ground.

Legendary musician Bob Dylan has made his New York art gallery debut with an exhibition of 40 drawings, limited editions and paintings on sale for $2,500 to $400,000 each.

The artwork comes from the "Drawn Blank Series" of sketches done by Dylan between 1989 and 1992, for example of a railroad track, a woman's back, a still life.

Sarajevo's famed architectural jewel, "City Hall", or the National Library, reopened on Friday, 22 years after it was destroyed by Bosnian Serb forces' shelling during the 1992-1995 war.

"It is the symbol of our strength to overcome the past and our hope for a better future," Sarajevo's mayor Ivo Komsic said at the opening ceremony after the sounds of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy."

Egypt unveiled Thursday the 3,000 year-old tombs of two senior pharaonic military men in the famed Saqqara necropolis, one of them decorated with well-preserved reliefs depicting the afterlife.

Saqqara, roughly 20 kilometres (12 miles) south of Cairo, was the burial ground for the neighbouring city of Memphis.

A photo album depicting troves of precious art works looted by the Nazis during World War II was donated Thursday to the National Archives, America's repository of historical artifacts.

The album is one of 39 "Hitler albums" -- essentially a catalogue of art confiscated by troops operating under orders from Der Fuerher.

Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians, says a meeting with Pope Francis in Jerusalem this month will help move the two churches closer to ending their nearly one-thousand-year divide.

In an interview with The Associated Press in his Istanbul office, Bartholomew also praised Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for improving rights for Christians but said pointedly, "it is not enough."