Luxury jeweler Bulgari on Thursday answered the Italian government's appeal for help in financing a renovation of Rome's famous Spanish Steps.

Bulgari, which was bought in 2011 by French luxury giant LVMH, will put 1.5 million euros ($2 million) towards the refurbishment which will begin in 2015 and last two years, Rome's mayor Ignazio Marino said.

Japan on Thursday marked the 19th anniversary of a Tokyo subway nerve gas attack with ceremonies to honor the 13 people who lost their lives.

Staff at the central Kasumigaseki metro station held a moment of silence at 8:00 am (2300 GMT Wednesday), and some commuters offered floral tributes at a remembrance stand erected there.

Senegal is failing to protect thousands of boys in Islamic boarding schools from forced begging and torture at the hands of their teachers, a global human rights organization said in a report released on Wednesday.

At least 50,000 boys known as talibes -- the vast majority aged between four and 12 -- are forced to beg in Senegal's streets most of the day, every day, by often brutally abusive Koranic teachers known as marabouts, according to campaigners.

A Rembrandt painting stolen from a French museum in 1999 and worth millions has been recovered in the southern city of Nice, a source close to the investigation said Wednesday.

Two people have been arrested after being found in possession of the Dutch master's "Child with a Soap Bubble" painting, which was valued at 20 million francs at the time of the theft, the source said.

A major exhibition of Renaissance master Veronese opens at London's National Gallery on Wednesday, bringing together for the first time in centuries around 50 works from the world-revered painter.

It is Britain's largest ever exhibition devoted to the artist, and is expected to enjoy similar success to the gallery's blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci show in 2011.

Thieves have stolen part of an ancient fresco from Pompeii, breaking in to a closed area of the UNESCO World Heritage landmark and chipping off a portrait of a Greek deity.

A custodian doing rounds last week discovered "the removal of a part of a fresco in the House of Neptune," where a depiction of the goddess Artemis had been "chiseled off with a metallic object," the Roman site's curator department said in a statement Tuesday.

Hundreds of young Palestinians gathered outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City with books on Sunday to encourage people to read more, organizers and police said.

"We had this idea to encourage people to read, to donate books to public libraries and to build new libraries by gathering around the walls of Jerusalem, each with a book in his hands," organizer Hossam Elayaan told Agence France Presse.

Colombia's Fernando Botero, whose paintings and sculptures of plump women have won him recognition as one of Latin America's most famous living artists, says he is "not obsessed" with fat women.

The 81-year-old insisted in an interview published on Sunday that his bulky subjects are not fat, preferring instead to call them "volumetric."

Millions of Indians splashed bright colors on each other Monday to celebrate the popular Hindu festival of Holi, which marks the start of spring.

The 'Festival of Colors' saw revelers pour onto streets across the country, smearing and splashing powder, known as 'gulal', and water on others to celebrate the triumph of good over evil.

Returning to their destroyed village after a catastrophic typhoon that killed thousands in the Philippines last year, a weary band of Catholics vowed a lifelong sacrifice to thank God for saving them.

They had walked through the streets of their hometown for three consecutive days before the storm with icons in hand while praying and asking the Lord to spare them from the looming disaster.