Libyan antiquities officials looked on with horror at Internet video footage that showed Islamist extremists wielding sledgehammers and power tools to grind ancient Iraqi treasures into dust.

They fear the Islamic State group jihadist movement's growing influence means the fate that befell these priceless Assyrian and Akkadian artefacts now awaits their own rich heritage dating back millennia.

The sequel to Swedish author Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millenium crime trilogy, due for release in August, kicks off with an artificial intelligence intrigue involving a U.S. spy agency, the book's publishers revealed Tuesday.

"That Which Does Not Kill" was completed in November by David Lagercrantz, known for co-authoring Swedish football star Zlatan Ibrahimovic's autobiography. 

With its dignity battered by six years of "humiliation" at the hands of its international creditors, cash-strapped Greece is turning to folk music and patriotism to restore its injured national pride.

Since taking power in January on a wave of anti-austerity sentiment, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has repeatedly hammered home his intention to do whatever is necessary to restore the nation's self respect.

As artists, they pushed the limits, bathing in blood, mud and urine. Vienna's famed "Actionists", whose avant garde movement may be the most radical in contemporary art, are the focus of a new exhibition in their home city.

The movement emerged in the 1960s as part of the new performance-based art, which broke with the confines of traditional painting and used the body as both surface and site of art-making.

A perennial debate over the birthplace of the cherry blossom has taken a fresh turn as a Chinese industry group claims the Asian giant is the tree's true home, rather than Japan or claimant South Korea.

Cherry blossoms have long been associated with Japan, where viewing the short-lived blooms is an enduringly popular pastime to herald the arrival of spring.

Russia has sacked the head of a Siberian theater after its radical staging of a Richard Wagner opera angered the powerful Russian Orthodox Church and prompted street protests.

Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky on Sunday fired the head of Novosibirsk State Opera and Ballet Theater over a controversial staging of Wagner's Tannhaeuser that senior clerics said desecrated the image of Christ.

It's high season in Petra, an ancient city hewn from rose-colored rock and Jordan's biggest tourist draw. Yet nearby hotels stand virtually empty these days and only a trickle of tourists make their way through a landmark canyon to the Treasury building where scenes of one of the "Indiana Jones" movies were filmed.

Petra's slump is part of a sharp decline in tourism as Jordan's economy pays a price for regional turbulence and its high-profile role in the U.S.-led battle against Islamic State militants next door.

More than seven decades after a daring bombing run by the "Doolittle Tokyo Raiders" rallied their own nation while stunning another, the World War II heroes are still adding to their legacy.

The group will receive the Congressional Gold Medal on April 15 in Washington then present it on April 18 — the 73rd anniversary of the raid — to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. The gold medal will go on display at the museum near Dayton, Ohio, joining an exhibit depicting the launch from an aircraft carrier of the Raiders' daring 1942 attack on Japan.

What makes a good son or daughter? At China's first museum dedicated to the topic of "filial piety", the answer seems to be: almost superhuman levels of devotion and sacrifice.

Respect for family elders has been a cornerstone of Chinese culture for millennia, but many believe it is being eroded by the country's rapid economic growth.

Fragments of pottery used by Egyptians to make beer and dating back 5,000 years have been discovered on a building site in Tel Aviv, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said on Sunday.

Excavation director Diego Barkan said 17 pits were found that had been used to store produce in the Early Bronze Age, from 3500 to 3000 BC.