Life Style

The surreal McCoy

LONDON: For an art movement that emerged from the ideas of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, surrealism perhaps wouldn't be expected to produce work as playful as a Salvador Dali satin sofa made in the shape of Mae West's lips, a ruby lips brooch crammed with pearls for teeth or an Elsa Schiaparelli dress with a skeleton applique on the torso.

Hopes German music hall will hit the right notes

HAMBURG: The city of Brahms and Mendelssohn is enhancing its cultural charm with a new concert hall that will soar above the Elbe River like a ghostly glass-sailed schooner.

Reviving the glory of the beautiful South

ATLANTA: After reviving 50 historic buildings in its hometown, the Savannah College of Art and Design is restoring an Atlanta landmark to its original High Victorian glory and reinventing it as a cultural arts center.

Life Travel

Big Man's burgers are turning Japanese

TOKYO: It is a few minutes before 10 am, and the shopping mall is still empty, yet the crew at Big Man is already at battle stations. The grill has been greased, the bacon sliced and the first load of eggs fried and just in time too. When the doors to the food court fly open, a swarm of diners makes a beeline for the counter and the delicacies beyond.

Once upon a time in Almeria

ALMERIA, Spain: "What was he thinking?" That's my first impression upon seeing the Desierto de Tabernas, in Spain's southeastern Almeria region. The only semi-desert in Europe, Tabernas averages only three days of rain annually, and with temperatures reaching 45C in summer, it can seem a stark, unwelcoming place. But for 15 years, beginning in the early 1960s, it served as a Mecca for filmmakers.

Life Culture

Can you dig it?

Under the guidance of the State Administration of Culture Heritage (SACH), China's Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2006 were crowned on Sunday. These 10 significant finds were selected from 24 nominations in an annual competition held by the Chinese Society of Archaeology and the administration's newspaper China Culture Relics News.

Up close with creatures great and small

The "Beauty of Animals" exhibition opened on Friday in Beijing Museum of Natural History two years after the American philanthropist Kenneth E Behring signed an agreement to supply $10 million worth of stuffed animals to the museum.

Discovery links the Roman Greek empires

ATHENS: Greek archaeologists discovered a Roman tomb filled with glass, copper and gold artefacts and an amphitheatre on the island of Cephalonia, which they say must have been an important link between ancient Greece and Italy.

Unearthed tombs reveal life of mysterious military master

HOHHOT: Archaeologists have discovered more than 5,000 items dating back 2,000 years from a complex of 385 tombs uncovered at a construction site in North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.