The discovery in a rubbish-strewn flat in Germany of nearly 1,500 paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse looted by the Nazis sparked urgent calls Monday to hunt for their rightful owners.

The shock find, valued at an estimated one billion euros ($1.3 billion dollars), was reported Sunday by news weekly Focus. Authorities repeatedly declined to comment on the trove apparently uncovered in 2011.

Author Yasmina Khadra said on Saturday that he plans to run as an independent candidate in Algeria's April 2014 presidential election.

"It's official. I am a candidate for the 2014 presidential election," he told Agence France Presse by telephone.

A three-tonne (3,000 kilo) stone has fallen from a wall surrounding a pharaonic tomb outside Cairo but the burial site was not damaged, Egypt's ministry of antiquities said on Saturday.

The incident occurred on Friday morning and work was on to restore the stone to its position, the ministry said, adding that Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim had visited the site on Saturday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Germans on Saturday to be vigilant to the dangers of anti-Semitism ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom.

In her weekly podcast, Merkel described the events of November 9, 1938 -- also known as 'The Night of Broken Glass' -- as "one of the darkest moments in German history."

Some of the finest masterpieces of 20th century art are the highlights of New York's November auction season, poised to set new sales records in a flourishing market.

The sum total of impressionist, modern, post-war and contemporary art being offered by Christie's and Sotheby's is expected to fetch more than $1.5 billion at combined evening and day sales from November 4 to 13.

Classes are overcrowded, curriculums out of date and facilities crumbling. In Egypt, frustrated parents have for decades relied on private tutors as overpopulation and government neglect have eviscerated public education.

And with the Arab world's most populous country plunged into turmoil since 2011, when a popular uprising ousted president Hosni Mubarak, hopes for reform are slimmer than ever as security dominates the political agenda.

Bob Dylan's electric guitar, on which he performed a career-defining set at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, is going under the hammer in New York for $500,000.

Christie's will auction off the 1964 Fender Stratocaster guitar on December 6 with five newly discovered Dylan song lyrics dating back to 1965-66.

The secretive street artist Banksy ended his self-announced month-long residency in New York City with a final piece of graffiti, a $615,000 painting donated to charity and a debate: Is he a jerk or a genius?

Banksy, who created a new picture, video or prank every day of October somewhere in the city, spent his last day like thousands of graffiti artists before him: He tagged a building near a highway with his name in giant bubble letters. The twist was that these letters were actual bubbles: balloon-like inflatables stuck to a wall near the Long Island Expressway in Queens.

The Vatican is taking the unusual step of conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as birth control, divorce and gay marriage, seeking input ahead of a major meeting on the family that Pope Francis plans next year.

The poll was sent in mid-October to every national conference of bishops with a request from the Vatican coordinator, Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, to "share it immediately as widely as possible to deaneries and parishes so that input from local sources can be received."

Four female lawmakers from Turkey's Islamic-rooted government attended parliament Thursday wearing headscarves for the first time, breaking a long taboo in the staunchly secular country.

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lifted on September 30 a decades-old ban on headscarves in the civil service as part of a package of reforms meant to improve democracy and freedoms.