NEW DELHI (AFP) ― More than 200 languages have vanished in India over the last 50 years, a new study says, blaming urban migration and fear among nomadic tribes of speaking their traditional tongues.The extensive study, conducted throughout the country over four years and released this week, has found 230 languages have “elapsed” while another 870 have survived the test of time in richly diverse but rapidly modernizing India, home to a vast number of indigenous or tribal peoples.Ganesh Devy, who

GENEVA (AFP) ― Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Wednesday lauded ailing Nelson Mandela as an icon of the global drive for democracy, after his South African fellow Nobel laureate was discharged from hospital.“He made a tremendous contribution. And this says it all. No more, no less. Tremendous is the word to characterize him,” said Gorbachev, whose role in ending the Cold War two decades ago won him the Nobel Peace Prize.“He made a tremendous contribution by taking a political position

PARIS (AP) ― “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” the hulking Hellenistic sculpture that dominates the Louvre Museum’s most frequented staircase, is taking flight ― away from tourists’ gazes for a restoration project.Officials at the famed Paris museum said the 2nd-century B.C. sculpture was set to be dismantled, hoisted onto rollers and wheeled into a closed cabin in another Louvre gallery for structural work and a meticulous cleaning to restore the original hues to its marble over the next nine mon

PARIS (AFP) ― Archaeologists drawing on a wide range of tools said on Wednesday they had pinpointed the crucial time in world history when Egypt emerged as a distinct state.Experts have wrangled for decades as to when turbulent upper and lower Egypt were brought together under a stable, single ruler for the first time.Conventional estimates, based on the evolving styles of ceramics found in human burials, vary hugely, from B.C. 3,400 to 2,900.A team led by Oxford University’s Michael Dee, report