French conductor Jean-Claude Casadesus is used to playing for classical music fans all over the world. But once a year, he and musicians from the National Orchestra of Lille play to a different kind of audience --  inmates in an overcrowded and rundown prison.

(Watch the AFP video on YouTube)

The Terminator wants to terminate paparazzi. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new law Sunday that will fine paparazzi for taking photos that invade a celebrity’s right to privacy. 

The new amendment raises the penalties when a person commits a trespass “in order to physically invade the privacy” of a celebrity in order to film or record them. It also targets media outlets who purchase the illegal photos.

But it raises first amendment questions. 

(Continue reading in CS Monitor)

Visit a new exhibition in Kabul and see a selection of some 2,000 Afghan artifacts which were illegally smuggled out of the country during three decades of conflict and civil war, treasures altogether weighing 3.5 tons.

No less remarkable than the craftsmanship on display at the National Museum of Afghanistan, is the story of the antiquities' return after customs officials stopped smugglers trying to take the looted goods through British airports three years ago.

Half belong to the pre-Islamic period before the seventh century. "Each piece is priceless."

About 70 percent of the museum's 100,000-piece collection was looted by mujahideen fighters in the 1990s. Exhibits were also damaged by rocket fire or the Taliban, on a rampage to destroy "un-Islamic" artifacts.
(Continue reading AFP story from Drexel University)

National Museum of Afghanistan, head of a Buddha