Australia is preparing to return two centuries-old statues to India, officials said Thursday, following allegations they were stolen from ancient sites and sold as part of an audacious art fraud.

The National Gallery of Australia's bronze sculpture of a dancing Shiva, purchased in 2008 from New York art and antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, was pulled from display in Canberra on Monday.

A Sri Lankan Buddhist monk led a procession of elephants Wednesday, demanding authorities capture wild pachyderms from the jungle to boost the dwindling number of the animals in temples.

Patron of the Tamed Elephant Owners' Association, monk Maagalkanday Sudaththa said temples faced a severe shortage of animals for their annual pageants where caparisoned elephants are paraded.

The Fox and Hound pub in downtown Philadelphia boasts all the fixings of a standard sports bar: huge TVs, numerous beers on draft and a menu filled with burgers, wings and nachos.

So what are all the easels and canvases for?

The National Park Service says the Washington Monument will reopen to visitors May 12 after being closed for nearly three years due to a 2011 earthquake.

The park service says the remaining scaffolding around the monument will begin to come down this week.

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, who uses cardboard tubes to make temporary housing for victims of natural disasters and refugees fleeing violence, has won his field's highest honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Award sponsor The Hyatt Foundation said Monday that it had chosen the 56-year-old architect, who has offices in Tokyo, Paris and New York, as its 2014 laureate.

Before his mother became the model for Blanche DuBois of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and his sister the inspiration for Laura Wingfield of "The Glass Menagerie," Tennessee Williams drew upon a college girlfriend — if only in name — to tell a story of desire, drunkenness and regret.

"Crazy Night" is a work of short fiction unseen by the general public until this month's release in the spring issue of The Strand Magazine, a quarterly based in Birmingham, Michigan. The story is narrated by a college freshman who confides about his romance with a senior, Anna Jean. Williams, while attending the University of Missouri at Columbia, briefly dated fellow student Anna Jean O'Donnell and wrote poetry about her.

Archaeologists on Sunday unveiled two colossal statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III in Egypt's famed temple city of Luxor, adding to an existing pair of world-renowned tourist attractions.

The two monoliths in red quartzite were raised at what European and Egyptian archaeologists said were their original sites in the funerary temple of the king, on the west bank of the Nile.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam on Sunday, hailing the lessons of history ahead of his first meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-Hye.

"We would like to face historical facts in a humble manner and we would like also to pass on the lessons and facts of history to the next generation," Abe said during the visit to the Jewish girl's former hideout.

Saudi Arabia's top clerics have declared an Islam-inspired cartoon series, which earned praise from U.S. President Barack Obama, a "work of the devil" that Muslims should not watch.

The television version of superhero comic book "The 99" is being aired by Saudi-owned satellite channel MBC3, based in Dubai in the neighboring United Arab Emirates.

A collection of John Lennon's drawings and manuscripts is going up for auction.

The "You Might Well Arsk" sale of the late Beatles' material is scheduled to take place June 4 in New York, Sotheby's said.