UNESCO

The State Department said the withdrawal from the United Nations' cultural agency will take effect Dec. 31, 2018. The U.S. had cut funding to the group years ago for offering Palestinians membership.

The Italian mayor says hosing down the steps to discourage snackers and their litter is "gentler" than levying fines. The city's historic sites, he says, deserve "a little bit of respect."

Authorities say they recovered about 3,500 pieces of stolen art, most of it from countries at war. Spanish police announced the suspects were arrested across Europe.

Two years ago, UNESCO gave Venice and Italy a deadline to figure out a way to manage the harmful effects of tourism or risk being placed on a World Heritage in Danger list. The deadline has passed.

Rome is under attack — by fast food joints, cheap souvenir shops and pubs, an open letter says. The "barbarism" has led hopeless Romans to beg the U.N. agency for help preserving cultural landmarks.

Ahmed al-Faqi al-Mahdi was on trial in The Hague for his role in the deliberate destruction of nine mausoleums and a mosque in Timbuktu. The radical Islamist was sentenced to nine years in prison.

The head of Syria's antiquities agency was in Italy making an appeal for help to stop the destruction of his war-torn country's cultural heritage at the hands of Islamic militants.

Photos released by the Islamist extremist group show a 2,000-year-old stone sculpture of a lion being smashed with sledgehammers.