WASHINGTON (AFP) - More than 50 million years ago, the Earth was a hotter place than it is today and horses the size of pet cats roamed the forests of North America, US scientists said on Thursday. These earliest known horses, known as Sifrhippus, actually grew smaller over tens of thousands of years in order to adapt to the higher temperatures of a period when methane emissions spiked, possibly...

WASHINGTON (AP) ― President Barack Obama ― the first black U.S. president ― heralded a new national black history museum as “not just a record of tragedy, but a celebration of life’’ as he marked Wednesday’s groundbreaking of the long-sought-after museum on the National Mall. Obama said the National Museum of African American History and Culture “has been a long time coming.’’ “It was on this g...

ATHENS (AFP) ― Greek culture minister Pavlos Geroulanos’s offer to resign over a major robbery at a museum in the city of Olympia has been rejected by the country’s premier, an official statement said Wednesday. Geroulanos had submitted his resignation on Friday, after robbers made off with scores of artefacts including items dating back over 3,000 years from a museum in the ancient Greek city o...

Police in Greece say 77 artifacts were stolen by armed robbers last week at a small museum in Ancient Olympia -- the birthplace of the ancient games -- revealing that the extent of the theft was worse than originally reported. Police and the Culture Ministry had initially estimated that some 65 objects up to 3,200 years old were taken in Friday’s raid, when two masked gunmen tied up a museum gua...

ATHENS (AP) ― Two masked gunmen stormed into a small museum at the birthplace of the ancient Olympics in southern Greece on Friday, smashing display cases with hammers and making off with dozens of antiquities up to 3,200 years old, authorities said. It was the second major museum theft in as many months in debt-crippled Greece, and a culture ministry unionist said spending cuts have compromised...

SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- A renowned South Korean conductor plans to meet with North Korean music officials this weekend in China to discuss a joint orchestra performance in Pyongyang, an official said Friday. South Korea allowed Chung Myung-whun, who leads the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, to hold consultations with North Koreans in Beijing on Sunday, according to the Unification Ministry offi...

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Hong Kong’s last dedicated Cantonese opera theatre is holding its final performances before it closes this week, in what some art lovers see as another nail in the coffin of a 300-year-old tradition. The 1,000-seat Sunbeam Theatre has been synonymous with the operatic heritage of China’s southern Cantonese-speaking minority for 40 years since it opened in 1972. It has earned l...

MEXICO CITY (AFP) ― Mexican archeologists on Tuesday announced the discovery of 23 stone plaques with carved images inside the main temple of what was once the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, in downtown Mexico City. The carved images of serpents and warriors tell stories that include the birth of the Aztec warrior god Huitzilopochtli, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) sai...