Looting

Iraq unveiled on Sunday a 2,800-year-old stone tablet returned by Italy, as the war-ravaged country works to recover from abroad antiquities looted from its territory.

The tablet, whose text is written in cuneiform, the Babylonian alphabet, bears the insignia of Shalmaneser III, the Assyrian king who ruled the region of Nimrod, in present-day northern Iraq, from 858 to 823 BC.

Lebanon's Ministry of Culture handed over to Iraq on Feb. 6 337 ancient artifacts that had been on display in a Lebanese museum for years.

The items, which included clay tablets, were returned by Minister of Culture Mohammed Murtada to Iraq's ambassador to Lebanon during a ceremony held at the National Museum of Beirut.

The archaeologists uncovered a large family tomb that was looted by grave robbers in antiquity

Over 17,000 looted ancient artefacts recovered from the United States and other countries were handed over to Iraq's Culture Ministry on Aug. 3, a restitution described by the government as the largest in the country's history.

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A painting by French master Nicolas Poussin, stolen by Nazi soldiers from its French Jewish owners in 1944, has been found in Italy and returned to its rightful owners, Italian police said on Thursday, AFP reports.

A building in the central Athens district of Thiseio that housed the historic Athenaeum Conservatory - organizer of the Maria Callas Grand Prix - for 22 years, suffered extensive looting in an act of barbarism by unknown assailants.

Looted ancient artifacts from Iraq and Afghanistan seized in Britain will be returned to their country of origin after appraisal by the British Museum, the institution said on July 8.

Descendants of fighters allied with the Nazis and the collaborationist World War II regime in Serbia have been asking for the restitution of property confiscated after the war, the national restitution agency said.

Rescue crews Wednesday continued to search the seaside areas northeast of Athens that were the worst affected by wildfires to locate any further victims, as the official death toll rose to 80.

'Pipe Dreams: The Plundering of Iraq's Oil Wealth' by Erin Banco (Columbia Global Reports, 144 pages, $15)