For 700 years Catholic faithful expressed their devotion to the Virgin Mary by creating an elaborate wardrobe for the mother and child, on display in a new exhibit in the French city of Lyon.

Playfully entitled "Fashion Icon", the show explores how from the 12th to the 19th centuries, clothes were cut to adorn the Virgin, sometimes becoming objects of worship in their own right.

More than 2,800 so-called honor attacks -- punishments for bringing shame on the family -- were recorded by Britain's police last year, according to figures released Saturday.

At least 2,823 incidents of "honor-based" violence took place, with the highest number recorded in London, the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organization (IKWRO) found.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe late Friday condemned the "disgraceful" desecration of an abandoned Jewish cemetery in Pristina where graves were daubed with Nazi graffiti.

"As the leading international human rights organization in Kosovo, the OSCE wholeheartedly condemns this disgraceful act," the acting head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo, Edward Joseph, said in a statement.

Experts have reclassified a painting of an old man long thought to have been made by one of Rembrandts' students as having come from the hand of the Dutch master himself, after X-ray analysis revealed outlines of a self-portrait of the artist as a young man underneath.

Ernst van de Wetering of the Rembrandt Research Project cited the new X-ray scans of the painting "Bearded Old Man," in addition to stylistic analysis and circumstantial evidence in support of the conclusion.

A French court on Friday convicted five men arrested in an FBI sting after stealing paintings by Monet, Sisley and Brueghel and sentenced them to between two and nine years in prison.

The thieves, who pulled off the brazen heist in 2007 at the Musee des Beaux-Arts Jules Cheret in Nice, had claimed they were enticed by the FBI to commit the crime.

Miami, once known mostly for its abundance of palm trees and bikinis, is forging a new identity as a world arts capital as it hosts the Art Basel fair, attracting collectors and aficionados from around the globe.

Beginning on Thursday and running through the weekend, Miami's edition of Art Basel -- billed as the most prestigious art show in the Americas -- will welcome some 50,000 visitors.

The newspaper coverage was troubling: London's huge international showcase was beset by planning problems, local opposition and labor woes — and the transport was a mess.

It sounds like the 2012 Olympics, but this was the Great Exhibition of 1851 generating stories of late trains, unscrupulous landlords and dangerous overcrowding.

Mexican mariachi music, Chinese shadow puppetry and poetic dueling from Cyprus were among the cultural traditions identified by the United Nations on Tuesday as in need of protection.

Also added to the Intangible Cultural Heritage list — now in its second year and nearly 250 strong — were French-style horseback riding, which celebrates harmony between beast and man, the doleful fado songs of Portugal and Jultagi tightrope walking from Korea.

The story of men, women and children plucked from their homes in the West's colonies and exhibited like zoo animals is the focus of a major show that opened on Monday at Paris' tribal arts museum.

"Exhibitions: the invention of the savage", at the Quai Branly museum, shows how up until the mid-20th century, labeling indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Oceania and America "savages" helped to justify the brutality of colonial rule.

A relic said to have belonged to the Virgin Mary left Russia Monday after a tour that saw it worshipped by three million people in a potent display of the power of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Belt of the Virgin Mary attracted a million people in Moscow alone, inspiring them to queue in a five-kilometer (three-mile) line for up to 26 hours in hope of touching the silver chest holding the relic and receiving a miracle.