They have taken the dubious art of the selfie to a whole new level.

But now -- in what will be a relief to some and derided by others -- Washington's top museums say selfie sticks are banned, in a growing trend among visitor centers in the United States to outlaw the devices.

More than three decades of war have damaged Afghanistan's once-thriving carpet industry, but weavers are tapping into the bloody past to boost their fortunes with "war rugs" depicting guns, tanks and warplanes.

On Chicken Street, the most famous street in Afghanistan during the "hippie trail" tourist days of the late 60s and 70s and still the place to come for souvenirs, some of the carpets in the shops look like pages of the country's wartorn history.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen says he has found the Japanese Navy's biggest warship at the bottom of the sea in the Philippines, 70 years after U.S. forces sank it.

Allen posted a photo on Twitter on Tuesday of the World War II battleship Musashi's rusty bow, which bore the Japanese empire's Chrysanthemum seal.

Norway's influential Nobel Peace Prize committee Tuesday demoted its controversial chairman Thorbjoern Thagland in a move unprecedented in the history of the award.

The committee, which said the former Norwegian prime minister would remain as a committee member, gave no reason for its decision.

Trains chug around Yangon's circular railway at a stately pace barely faster than a brisk walk, but this creaking relic of colonial times is at the heart of plans for a public transport revolution in the traffic-choked metropolis.

Rush hour spills a throng of passengers towards Kyi Kyi Win's cigarette stand at a downtown station, and the tobacconist says she has seen more commuters using the trains since changes to the city's long-neglected network were introduced. 

British conductor Simon Rattle is moving back to his home country as music director of the London Symphony Orchestra following news of his departure from the Berlin Philharmonic.

The 60-year-old, considered one of the greatest conductors in the world by critics, will take up the baton at the LSO in 2017, the orchestra said Tuesday, following in the footsteps of figures including Andre Previn and Valery Gergiev.

Thousands of poppies were being added to a memorial "wall" at Sydney's Circular Quay on Tuesday in memory of Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died in World War I's Gallipoli campaign.

The two-meter structure in the shape of a "100" marks the upcoming century since the April 25, 2015 landing of troops on the peninsula in what is now Turkey.

Tintin's latest adventure is taking him to Sotheby's and Christie's in Paris this month, as booming prices for comic books attract the attention of ultra-rich collectors.

Both auction houses have organised major sales of comic and graphic novel items in the French capital this month that are expected to rake in millions.

French cultural officials say 15 pieces of art have been stolen from a Chinese museum south of Paris, including a replica crown of the King of Siam given to France's emperor in the mid-19th century.

The Culture Ministry says the break-in before dawn Sunday at the Chinese Museum at Fontainebleau Castle was over in less than seven minutes.

After seven decades holed up in a Catholic church basement in the Lithuanian capital, thousands of Yiddish manuscripts that survived the Holocaust and Stalin's anti-Jewish onslaught are finally seeing the light of day.

A browning, century-old play by renowned Jewish playwright Jacob Gordin is among them. Penned in Yiddish but using the Latin alphabet, it still bears the red wax seal of Tsarist Russia's censors.