Iran cuts ties with France's Louvre museum

Iran is cutting ties with the British Museum in protest at repeated delays in the loan to Tehran of an ancient Persian treasure, the Cyrus Cylinder, local media reported on Sunday."Since the Cyrus Cylinder has not been transferred to Iran, we will lodge a complaint against the British Museum to UNESCO and cut ties," Hamid Baghai, who heads Iran's cultural heritage and tourism organisation, said in the reports.

The Egyptian Museum has received five ancient fresco pieces that France's Louvre Museum returned under the threat of a boycott, Egypt's antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Wednesday.The fragments, taken from the tomb of an ancient Egyptian noble, arrived in the museum on Tuesday as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, Hawass said in a statement.The Louvre said it decided to return the fragments after Hawass severed ties with the museum in October. The fragments had been stolen in 1980, according to Hawass.

(hesweptlime)

PARIS — France is returning seven paintings taken from their Jewish owners during World War II, part of an ongoing effort to give back hundreds of looted artworks that still hang in the Louvre and other museums. The works were stolen or sold under duress up to seven decades ago as their Jewish owners fled Nazi-occupied Europe. All seven were destined for display in the art gallery Adolf Hitler wanted to build in his birthplace of Linz, Austria, according to a catalog for the planned museum.

IBM on Monday revealed an alliance with the venerable Louvre Museum to use sensors, real-time data analysis and other Internet Age tools to make the museum smarter.IBM's "building whisperer" has been listening to the Louvre to make the famed Paris museum better at protecting art, saving energy, and staying open for its millions of annual visitors."It is not a job; it is a mission," said IBM industry solutions vice president David Bartlett, whose passion for figuring out how to make places more efficient has earned him the nickname "the building whisperer."

SINGAPORE/SEOUL — South Korea’s Samsung Total Petrochemicals Co has revived a contract to buy Iranian oil after a year’s hiatus, as thin margins in plastics make the cheap fuel from Iran hard to resist, people familiar with the deal said on Friday. Stringent U.S. and European sanctions aimed at reducing Iran’s oil income and forcing Tehran to curb its nuclear programme have made shipping and paying for the oil hard, halving the Islamic Republic’s crude exports.

The Louvre said Thursday it has teamed up with Nintendo to hand out 3D game consoles to guide visitors through its vast art collections, as part of a stepped up digital drive at the Paris museum.Starting in March, the world's most visited museum will gradually replace its traditional audio-guides -- used by just four percent of its 8.5 million annual visitors -- with 3DS pocket consoles."We are the first museum in the world to do this," Agnes Alfandari, museum's head of multimedia told AFP.

UNESCO on Monday urged Tanzania not to put development, notably a controversial highway planned to cut through the iconic Serengeti national park, before the safeguarding of its cultural heritage.The Tanzanian government next year wants to kick off construction on a road that will cut through a 50-kilometre (30-mile) swathe of the Serengeti park classed as a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.Conservationists say it will have a devastating effect on the local ecology, in particular wildlife migration patterns.