Germany's Bavaria state signaled Wednesday it would not seek to prevent the publication of an annotated version of Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" in an apparent about-face.

Amid a debate over academic freedom and a back and forth over whether to pursue the project, Bavaria indicated that it would not try to stop a historical institute from bringing out a version of the book with scholars' commentary.

France, prized by tourists for its historical treasures, loses at least half a million buried archaeological items to pillagers each year, a group fighting the practice said Wednesday.

Jean-David Desforges, head of the French association Stop the Pillage of Archeological and Historical Heritage, told a conference that many objects from ancient Gaul, and Nazi artifacts from World War II were illegally dug up and sold by thousands of prospectors using metal detectors.

Even as city living booms around the world, the Slow City movement directed by an intrepid Italian is gaining a global following with a back to basics campaign to make small towns the new place to be.

From his hometown of Orvieto -- a hilltop mediaeval gem surrounded by castles and vineyards in central Umbria -- Pier Giorgio Oliveti has helped expand Cittaslow to 28 countries including South Korea, Turkey and the United States.

Poland's powerful Catholic Church has declared war on "gender theory", saying it undermines the traditional family -- but critics say that is a tactic to shift attention away from a paedophile priest scandal.

The theory explores sexual orientation and the roles assigned by society to individuals based on their gender, but the Polish Church has borrowed the English word "gender" to refer to a range of issues including contraception, abortion and homosexuality.

Beirut Knights and Sitt Sobhiye are two intriguing books that have been recently released by the Beirut-based publishing and distribution house Turning Point Books.

A very special date awaits you in Beirut Knights. It is all about real-life Lebanese dating disasters told with a cheeky twist and touch of rebellion.

A 1950s family house in New Jersey, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright but endangered by flooding, is moving 1,200 miles (nearly 2,000 kilometers) to start a new life in Arkansas.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, opened in 2011 by the Walton family of Walmart fame, has acquired the Bachman Wilson House that was built 60 years ago in Millstone village.

Italy's cultural police, who have taken a leading role in the fight against the smuggling of antiquities, put on show a trove of recovered stolen art in Rome from Etruscan funerary urns to Renaissance paintings.

Dozens of works are being displayed in the presidential palace in the Italian capital in a special exhibition also intended to show off a police force that is called in to consult on art thefts around the world.

Buy your ticket to an art house movie, order a glass of wine and kick back on century-old seats: Vienna's half a dozen old picture houses still draw crowds with their retro charm.

At the Bellaria, a cinema founded in 1911 in central Vienna, there is only one screen, no bright lights and no posters of the latest Hollywood action blockbusters or Pixar animated capers.

The U.N.'s cultural agency says it's delaying for six months a disputed exhibit on Jewish connections to the Holy Land after objections from Arab countries.

The exhibition, which is called "People, Book, Land — The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land," was scheduled to open Monday at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris.

A Spanish plan to tighten abortion laws will take women back to the Stone Age, French Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine said Tuesday.

Her broadside came amid a debate on a controversial new abortion law in France that would scrap a requirement for women to prove they are in distress to legally terminate a pregnancy.