African countries are reviving a bid at the United Nations to block the appointment of the first-ever U.N. expert tasked with investigating violence and discrimination against LGBT minorities.

Burkina Faso on Thursday circulated a letter to the U.N. General Assembly on behalf of African countries urging support for its demand to hold talks on the appointment.

Tunisia's prime minister said Friday that his government would seek to amend a controversial law that allows men who rape underage girls to avoid punishment by marrying their victims.

When he was just plain old Bonaparte, the man who was to became Napoleon pillaged works of art from all over Europe with the aim of making the Louvre in Paris a museum for all mankind.

The United States filed suit in court Thursday to recover an ancient serpentine ring and gold coins trafficked by the Islamic State group in a move aimed at preventing stolen Syrian and Iraqi antiquities from disappearing into collectors' hands.

Israel's parliament will ease its dress code rules, an official said Thursday, after staffers demonstrated when colleagues who wore skirts deemed too short were barred from entering the building.

The UN's cultural agency called for emergency measures on Thursday to prevent further looting at the historic Iraqi city of Nimrud which has been wrecked by Islamic State militants.

Nimrud, founded in the 13th century BC on the Tigris river about 30 kilometres (18 miles) southeast of Mosul, was retaken by Iraqi forces on November 13 after it was overrrun by IS in 2014.

Academy award-winning director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is planning to put on public show a boat which sank off Libya killing up to 900 people, Italy's La Repubblica reported Wednesday.

Palmyra may just have fallen yet again to the Islamic State group, but a new "immersive" 3D show in Paris lets you walk through the Syrian city's classical colonnades as they were before the jihadists blew them to bits.

Prominent Syrian philosopher and intellectual Sadiq Jalal al-Azm has passed away in Germany after a long battle with brain cancer, his son said.

Al-Azm was 82.

Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war.

For centuries, Aleppo was Syria's economic and cultural powerhouse, attracting tourists from around the world to its celebrated heritage sites.