France's Louvre Museum says it is open to the idea of returning ancient Egyptian fresco fragments at the centre of a row with Egyptian officials.

Earlier, Egypt's head of antiquities Zahi Hawass told the AFP news agency that the Louvre had bought the fragments knowing they were stolen.

Egypt had severed co-operation with the Louvre, pending their return, he said.

The Pharaonic steles, on display in the Louvre, are reported to be from a tomb in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor.

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By ALEX WITCHEL

On his first day in Huntington, W. Va., Jamie Oliver spent the afternoon at Hillbilly Hot Dogs, pitching in to cook its signature 15-pound burger. That’s 10 pounds of meat, 5 pounds of custom-made bun, American cheese, tomatoes, onions, pickles, ketchup, mustard and mayo. Then he learned how to perfect the Home Wrecker, the eatery’s famous 15-inch, one-pound hot dog (boil first, then grill in butter). For the Home Wrecker Challenge, the dog gets 11 toppings, including chili sauce, jalapeños, liquid nacho cheese and coleslaw. Finish it in 12 minutes or less and you get a T-shirt.

So much for local color. Earlier that day, Oliver met with a pediatrician, James Bailes, and a pastor, Steve Willis. Bailes told him about an 8-year-old patient who was 80 pounds overweight and had developed Type 2 diabetes. If the child’s diet didn’t change, the doctor said, he wouldn’t live to see 30. Willis told Oliver that he visits patients in local hospitals several days a week and sees the effects of long-term obesity firsthand. Since he can’t write a prescription for their resulting illnesses, he said, all he can do is pray with them.

Last year, an Associated Press article designated the Huntington-Ashland metropolitan area as the unhealthiest in America, based on its analysis of data collected in 2006 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly half the adults in these five counties (two in West Virginia, two in Kentucky and one in Ohio) were obese, and the area led the nation in the incidence of heart disease and diabetes. The poverty rate was 19 percent, much higher than the national average. It also had the highest percentage of people 65 and older who had lost their teeth — nearly 50 percent.

All of which makes Huntington the perfect setting for the next Jamie Oliver Challenge. While he understands the allure of Home Wreckers and Big Macs alike, this British celebrity chef has made it his mission in recent years to break people’s dependence on fast food, believing that if they can learn to cook just a handful of dishes, they’ll get hooked on eating healthfully. The joy of a home-cooked meal, rudimentary as it sounds, has been at the core of his career from the start, and as he has matured, it has turned into a platform.

Oliver became famous at 23 for his television series “The Naked Chef,” which was broadcast from 1999 to 2001, first in Britain, then here, on the Food Network. The title referred not to his lack of clothing but to his belief in stripping pretense and mystery from the kitchen — the idea that anyone can cook and everyone should. He was loose and playful, measuring olive oil not in spoonfuls but in “glugs,” making a mess and having a ball. In the years since, that laddish charmer has morphed, somewhat unexpectedly, into a crusading community organizer. “Jamie’s School Dinners,” his award-winning four-part series, exposed the shameful state of school lunches in Britain and made for riveting television — he and the school cooks working feverishly to prepare dishes like tagine of lamb that the students either refused to try or dumped in the trash after one bite. When he eventually succeeded in getting them to abandon their processed poultry and fries and eat his food, the teachers reported a decrease in manic behavior and an increase in concentration. The school nurses noted a reduction in the number of asthma attacks. Those findings, along with “Feed Me Better,” his online campaign and petition drive, were the impetus for the British government to invest more than a billion dollars to overhaul school lunches.

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The Louvre museum in Paris will return five ancient fresco fragments to Egypt within weeks, France's government says.

The announcement comes two days after the head of antiquities in Cairo said he would cease all co-operation with the museum until they were sent back.

The Egyptians say the Louvre bought the Pharaonic steles in 2000 even though it knew they had been stolen in the 1980s.

They are believed to be from a 3,200-year-old tomb of the cleric, Tetaki, in the Valley of the Kings, near Luxor.

The steles, which are each only 15cm (5.9in) wide and 30cm (11.8in) high, are currently part of the Louvre's reserve collection.

By JUDY DEMPSEY

BERLIN — Culture lovers, visitors and the city authorities of Berlin were reveling in the reopening Friday of the Neues Museum in the heart of the German capital by Chancellor Angela Merkel, the culmination of decades of efforts to renovate a special site destroyed during World War II.

But the celebrations have been marred by a growing dispute between the German and Egyptian governments about the star of the show: the 3,300-year-old limestone and stucco bust of Queen Nefertiti, a wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten.

The Nefertiti sculpture has been in Germany since 1913. But it is only now that Egypt is demanding that this fragile and haunting object, perched alone in a domed room that overlooks the length of the museum, be returned.

The Egyptian antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, told the German media over the past few days that Nefertiti belonged to his country.

In interviews with Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger and Spiegel Online, Mr. Hawass said that an official investigation had begun into how Nefertiti arrived in Germany. “If she left Egypt illegally, which I am convinced she did, then I will officially demand it back from Germany,” he said in both interviews.

It was the first time that Egypt had made an official request for the statue to be returned if it was found to have been illegally removed from Egypt.

By NADIM AUDI

PARIS — When McDonald’s France announced a plan to open a restaurant in the commercial mall under the Louvre, the scene appeared to be set for a new French controversy. The New World was about to strike at the heart of France’s most celebrated cultural symbol. The French would not take it lightly.

While some in the international news media, especially in Britain, found this line entrancing, the French simply shrugged at the news. The announcement was ignored by the national newspapers, apart from a small article published by Le Parisien, a popular daily.

The reality is that the French have gotten used to their McDonald’s, widely nicknamed “McDo” (pronounced mac-DOUGH). Statistics suggest, in fact, that they have grown fond of it. Since McDonald’s France served its first Big Mac 30 years ago, it has opened 1,140 restaurants across the country.

The French operation of McDonald’s is the second most profitable after the one in the United States. French patrons are also the world’s biggest spenders: an average visit here amounts to about $15, including tax, versus $4 in the United States.

With the recession having driven customers away from more expensive restaurants, the company is estimating growth of 10 percent in France this year. Quick, a Belgian fast food chain with 346 restaurants in France, expects to grow by 3 percent in 2009, according to its chief executive, Jean-Paul Brayer.

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The good people of Newtown, Sydney, Australia, apparently have shut down the MacDonald there — by providing very low patronage and the occasional protest... One must say Newtown, Sydney, is a feast of low-cost high-quality food from Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese, organic, cafes, any cuisine one dares to name, including a few Italian joints up the road, not far from the Enmore Theatre... Why then have a MacDonald there, when most MacDonalds thrive on being situated strategically on a main road with parking to boot, and serving food between sugar buns specially designed for kiddies and old kiddies with uneducated palate? In Newtown, parking is limited and the "village" (Sydney is a city of Villages) functions well that way... But the MacDonald was situated in front of a no parking/clearway-zone/bus stop... And the people (and visitors to) of Newtown are mostly gourmets on foot.. Better than the French I would suggest...

German officials have ruled out returning an ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti to Egypt - saying it is too fragile to be transported.

And they have insisted that the bust was acquired legally by the Prussian state nearly a century ago.

Egypt first requested the return of the antiquity in 1930, but successive German governments have refused.

Head of antiquities Zahi Hawass says the bust was smuggled out of Egypt by a German archaeologist in 1913.

Mr Hawass claims the archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt, disguised its true value by covering it in a coating of clay.

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