JAHANABAD, Pakistan (AP) ― When the Taliban blew the face off a towering, 1,500-year-old rock carving of Buddha in northwest Pakistan almost five years ago, it fell to an intrepid Italian archaeologist to come to the rescue. Thanks to the efforts of Luca Olivieri and his partners, the 6-meter-tall image near the town of Jahanabad is getting a facelift, and many other archaeological treasures in ...

A Chinese Crested dog from Britain defeated an international group of competitors to win the title of World’s Ugliest Dog. Mugly won the grand prize Friday at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, Calif., Bay City News Service reported. “I couldn’t speak when they announced Mugly’s name,” the dog’s owner, Bev Nicholson, said. “I didn’t know which way to look. I was shaking as much as the dog.” Th...

Theater "Hairspray”: Broadway musical “Hairspray” is returning for its third run in Seoul. Having premiered in Seoul in 2007, the musical had another successful run in 2009. "Hairspray" has won a total of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical in 2003, since it first opened in Broadway in 2002. It takes place in the early 1960s, and tells the story of Tracy Turnblad, an overweight yet optimis...

Veterinarians at a North Carolina zoo say they are crossing their fingers as a pair of jumbo contact lenses are made for one of their elephants. C’sar nearly went blind at the N.C. Zoo in Asheboro, but cataract surgery saved the day and has the 38-year-old bull African elephant pretty much back to normal after some harrowing months of bumping into things and being unable to eat. The next ste...

U.S. scientists recently claimed to have found the remains of the legendary lost city of Ciudad Blanca (“White City”) in Honduras, according to news reports. Using laser-based light detection and ranging technique, researchers from the University of Houston and the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping have managed to locate ruins of the ancient city, hidden deep within the jungle for centu...

Theater “Wedding”: Popular musical producer Song Seung-hwan, whose 1997 non-verbal piece “Nanta” made a global hit, has made a comeback with another foreigner-friendly work. Titled “Wedding,” Song’s latest musical is also non-verbal; its actors and actresses sing, dance, act and play over 20 musical instruments. The one-of-a-kind performance is specifically designed to draw foreign audiences. Th...

A photo taken in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1953 shows a nun who tried to catch a taxi looking up to see the photographer like she’s caught doing something bad and an elegant-looking rich lady giving her a stern look. The train station was a place where Riboud found many unexpected funny moments. Another picture, taken at the Lyon train station in Paris, features travelers si...

A Chinese delegation abruptly left a religious conference in Yeosu on Wednesday morning after Tibetans attending the event refused to acquiesce to demands they leave. The Chinese delegation, consisting of Buddhist officials and monks, had walked out of the opening ceremony of the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Korea the previous evening. The Chinese had complained about the Tibetans’ participa...

Korean people in their 30s, who were born in the 1970s and went to college in the 1990s, are the key generation leading mainstream Korean culture and consumption markets, a private think tank said in a report. Dubbed the “397 generation,” those in their 30s took up the largest portion in contributing to the sales of local department stores with 31.2 percent in 2010, followed by those in their 40...

BEIJING (AFP) ― Chinese archaeologists have unearthed 110 new terracotta warriors that laid buried for centuries, an official said Monday, part of the famed army built to guard the tomb of China’s first emperor. The life-size figures were excavated near the Qin Emperor’s mausoleum in China’s northern Xi’an city over the course of three years, and archaeologists also uncovered 12 pottery horses, ...