2013 Nordic festival in U.S. capital

WASHINGTON (AFP) ― The renowned Kennedy Center venue in the U.S. capital will next year host dozens of artists and performing companies from Nordic countries to celebrate the region’s theater, dance, music, and food.The “Nordic Cool 2013” festival in February and March next year will feature visiting artists from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Greenland, Faroe Islands, the center announced Tuesday.Among the highlights will be classical music shows, ballet performances, contemporary d

March 7, 2012

Quake researchers warn of Tokyo's 'Big One'

A year on from one of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history, Japanese scientists are warning anew that Tokyo could soon be hit by a quake that will kill thousands and cause untold damage.Greater Tokyo, home to 35 million tightly packed people, has seen a three-fold increase in tectonic activit

March 5, 2012

Greek antiquities reburied for lack of funds: report

ATHENS (AFP) ― Lack of funding in crisis-hit Greece has stymied archaeological research and leads experts to rebury valuable discoveries to better protect them, a Greek daily reported on Friday.“Mother Earth is the best protector of our antiquities,” Michalis Tiverios, a professor of archaeology at Thessaloniki’s Aristotelio University, told Ta Nea daily on the sidelines of an annual archaeological congress in the city.Tiverios recently persuaded the culture ministry to rebury a previously-unkno

March 4, 2012

Wealthy more likely to lie or cheat: researchers

Maybe, as the novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald suggested, the rich really are different. They're more likely to behave badly, according to seven experiments that weighed the ethics of hundreds of people. The "upper class," as defined by the study, were more likely to break the law while driving, take ca

Feb. 28, 2012

Government vows to treat foreign tourists right

Culture Ministry announces plans to eradicate tourist rip-offs, increase number of licensed tour guidesA Japanese tourist who took a call van from Dongdaemun to Chungmuro, both in central Seoul, was taken aback when the driver demanded 330,000 won for the 2 km ride. The driver even locked up the protesting tourist in the car for five minutes. Another group of Japanese tourists was told to pay 50,000 won for one kimchijeon (a Korean-style pancake made with kimchi) and two bottles of beer at a cov

Feb. 27, 2012

Click, unfriend: women more likely to do it than men

Women are more likely than men to delete friends from their online social networks and tend to choose more restrictive privacy settings, according to a study published on Friday.The study by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project also found that men were nearly twice as likely

Feb. 27, 2012

Shipwrecked silver begins voyage back to Spain

A 17-ton haul of silver coins, lost for two centuries in the wreck of a sunken Spanish galleon, began its journey back to its home country on Friday after the deep-sea explorers who lifted it to the surface lost their claim to ownership.Two Spanish military C-130 cargo planes took off after noon fro

Feb. 26, 2012

Cat-sized horses were the norm in a hotter past: study

WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than 50 million years ago, the Earth was a hotter place than it is today and horses the size of pet cats roamed the forests of North America, US scientists said on Thursday.These earliest known horses, known as Sifrhippus, actually grew smaller over tens of thousands of years

Feb. 24, 2012

Work begins on black history museum

WASHINGTON (AP) ― President Barack Obama ― the first black U.S. president ― heralded a new national black history museum as “not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life’’ as he marked Wednesday’s groundbreaking of the long-sought-after museum on the National Mall.Obama said the National Museum of African American History and Culture “has been a long time coming.’’“It was on this ground long ago that lives were once traded, where hundreds of thousands once marched for jobs and for fre

Feb. 23, 2012

Greek P.M. rejects culture minister’s ...resignation

ATHENS (AFP) ― Greek culture minister Pavlos Geroulanos’s offer to resign over a major robbery at a museum in the city of Olympia has been rejected by the country’s premier, an official statement said Wednesday.Geroulanos had submitted his resignation on Friday, after robbers made off with scores of artefacts including items dating back over 3,000 years from a museum in the ancient Greek city of Olympia.But in a meeting between Geroulanos and Papademos, the culture minister was told his resignat

Feb. 23, 2012

Olympia theft worse than originally reported

Police in Greece say 77 artifacts were stolen by armed robbers last week at a small museum in Ancient Olympia -- the birthplace of the ancient games -- revealing that the extent of the theft was worse than originally reported.Police and the Culture Ministry had initially estimated that some 65 objects up to 3,200 years old were taken in Friday’s raid, when two masked gunmen tied up a museum guard and used a sledgehammer to smash display cabinets at the southern Greek museum.Most of the items on

Feb. 21, 2012

Museum robbed at Greece’s ancient Olympia

ATHENS (AP) ― Two masked gunmen stormed into a small museum at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece on Friday, smashing display cases with hammers and making off with dozens of antiquities up to 3,200 years old, authorities said.It was the second major museum theft in as many months in debt-crippled Greece, and a culture ministry unionist said spending cuts have compromised security at hundreds of museums and ancient sites across the country. With unemployment at 21 percent

Feb. 19, 2012