The pilgrimage to the ancient Ghriba synagogue on Tunisia's resort island of Djerba began on Friday amid tight security, with hundreds of Jewish faithful expected, including Israelis.

The first pilgrims arrived at the sanctuary in the morning, an Agence France Presse journalist reported, for the start of an annual ritual that has seen numbers fall dramatically since an al-Qaida attack in 2002 and instability following Tunisia's 2011 revolution.

With Italy still mired in a long-running government crisis, a show honoring Renaissance politics genius Niccolo Machiavelli opened in Rome this week celebrating his enduring legacy.

The exhibition at the Vittoriano museum celebrates the 500th anniversary of Machiavelli's classic study of leadership "The Prince" and is entitled "The Prince and his Times: 1513 to 2013".

A 16th century religious tapestry which police suspect was stolen by one of Europe's most prolific art thieves from a cathedral in Spain in 1979 has returned to the country after an odyssey that took it to five countries.

Culture Minister Jose Ignacio Wert and Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz presented the wool and silk tapestry, depicting the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, Thursday at a Madrid news conference a day after it was handed over to Spanish officials from the U.S. customs service.

A 16th-century Amati violoncello displayed in the National Music Museum has long been nicknamed "The King," but the ghost of a legendary rock 'n' roller has arrived in South Dakota to reclaim his regal moniker.

A slightly smashed acoustic guitar played by Elvis Presley on his final tour in 1977 now greets visitors in front of the museum's main galleries. The Martin D-35 was tossed aside by "The King" during a St. Petersburg, Fla., concert after suffering a broken strap and string, said Robert Johnson, a Memphis-based guitarist who donated the item.

Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum opens Friday a major retrospective of works by Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali which explores how his experiments with painting, cinema and advertising have influenced art.

The exhibition features more than 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, writings and television and film clips from the 1920s to the 1980s, including 30 works never before shown in Spain.

Tunisia's Court of Cassation was on Thursday reviewing the jail terms of two young men for posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on the Internet, a case that has angered the secular opposition.

"I am at the court, the hearing is about to begin. After the hearing, I will make known the progress of the case," defense lawyer Ahmed Mselmi told Agence France Presse.

Gay rights groups are pushing to adjust a bipartisan Senate bill to include gay couples, but Democrats are treading carefully, wary of adding another divisive issue that could lose Republican support and jeopardize the entire bill.

Both parties want the bill to succeed. Merely getting to agreement on the basic framework for the immigration overhaul, which would create a long and costly path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, was no small feat for senators. And getting it through a divided Congress is still far from a done deal.

A French court on Wednesday dismissed former justice minister Rachida Dati's request to ban the publication of a satirical comic book depicting the quest to unmask her daughter's mystery father.

Dati, 47, a glamorous protege of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, had a child four years ago with a man she refused to name, sparking feverish speculation in a country where the political elite's sexual antics are usually kept quiet.

A small robot has discovered three possible burial chambers under a temple in Mexico's pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan, a find that may reveal secrets about funeral rituals in the ancient site.

The robot, dubbed Tlaloc II-TC, located the chambers in the last section of a 2,000-year-old tunnel tucked under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, surprising archeologists who had expected to find just one room.

They dropped their language and religion to survive after the 1915 genocide, but close to 100 years on Turkey's "hidden Armenians" want to take pride in their identity.

Some genocide survivors adopted Islam and blended in with the Kurds in eastern Turkey's Dersim mountains to avoid further persecution.