CAIRO — Egypt is officially requesting the return of the 3,300-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti that has been in a Berlin museum for decades.

The bust, dating back to the 14th century B.C. monarch, tops Egypt's wish list of artifacts the country hopes to bring back as part of a campaign to retrieve thousands of antiquities spirited out during the colonial period and afterward.

Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities on Monday quoted its chief, Zahi Hawass, as saying an official request was sent to German authorities.

Germany has declined past Egyptian requests for the bust's return, saying it was in Germany legally and is too fragile to move. The bust is currently at Berlin's Neues Museum.

MOSCOW — A new poll sponsored by the pro-Kremlin party is asking Russians to vote on whether it's time to bury Vladimir Lenin.The embalmed body of the man who founded the Soviet Union still lies on public display in a Red Square mausoleum almost 20 years after the communist state collapsed.The contentious issue is raised almost every year around the anniversary of his death on Jan. 21, 1924.Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said that the fate of Lenin's body will in the end be decided by the Russian people.