DETROIT (AP) ― A former Detroit university professor is pledging $5 million, hoping it will spark a wildfire of private financial support to protect valuable art from being sold to pay creditors in the city’s bankruptcy.A. Paul Schaap said he wants to help the Detroit Institute of Arts as well as retirees whose pensions could be cut as part of the city’s plan to eventually exit bankruptcy. Art purchased over the years with city money could be pursued as assets that should be sold to pay off a po

PARIS (AFP) ― A Paris court on Friday dismissed an attempt by advocacy group Survival International to block the auction of 25 sacred objects from Arizona’s Hopi tribe that has caused outrage. The sale of the “Kachina” ceremonial masks and headdresses will go ahead on Monday as planned, despite pleas from the Hopi’s religious authorities to cancel the auction.The court battle against auction house EVE echoed another legal saga that erupted in April when French firm Neret-Minet ignored internatio

LONDON (AP) ― An out-of-this-world sex scene invoking stars, supernovas and statisticians has won U.S.-based writer Manil Suri the uncoveted Bad Sex in Fiction Award.Suri, a novelist and mathematician, won the annual British prize for a passage in his novel “The City of Devi,” in which the characters “streak like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks and atomic nuclei.”The passage climaxes: “In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star, statisticians the wor

The era of 35 mm film in South Korea‘s movie industry has been phased out in favor of digital projectors at major theaters across the nation. Cinecube, the only movie theater which supported analogue film screening, recently replaced its projectors with a digital model. As the arthouse theater opted for a digital system, Korean moviegoers have nowhere to watch latest films on the traditional reel. Cinemate, a film caption company, said it is closing down its business to focus on the digital post

The Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism on Tuesday expressed regret over a recent scandal in which some of its mid-ranking members were caught drinking at a training center. According to the country’s largest Buddhist sect, its internal audit department has launched an investigation into a recent revelation that 10 monks on Nov. 28 consumed more than three boxes of beer and a box of soju at the Korean Buddhism Culture Center in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province. The facility is intended for the prom