In a part of Rome few tourists ever reach, the Metropoliz Museum of the Other and the Elsewhere (MAAM) takes the concept of the warehouse gallery into a new dimension.

Located in an abandoned salami factory on the Italian capital's scruffy eastern periphery, the museum is also home to 200 squatters, including 50 children, whose precarious situation is an integral part of a project described by its creator, Giorgio de Finis, as a living, breathing artwork.

A prominent Turkish professor on Thursday began a jail sentence after being convicted of preventing a female student wearing a Muslim headscarf from entering the university where he worked, his lawyer said.

Rennan Pekunlu, a former professor of astrophysics at Ege University, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 for violating a headscarf-wearing student's "constitutional right to education" by barring her from entering the faculty.

It hardly seems the gateway to a new life of safety and prosperity: An office tucked away in a grey apartment block in Istanbul. Yet every day, dozens of Iraqi Catholics queue here, hoping it will open the door to a new life free of fear.

The Chaldean Catholics, members of Iraq's Assyrian minority, have fled Baghdad and the now jihadist-controlled city of Mosul to escape the violence that has frequently targeted Christians since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003.

An ancient Tibetan silk tapestry has set a world record for Chinese art after it was sold to a Shanghai tycoon for $45 million (HK$348 million) at auction in Hong Kong, according to Christie's.

The 600-year-old artwork, called a thangka and embroidered in vivid hues of red and gold, was bought by Liu Yiqian on Wednesday and will be displayed at his new museum in Shanghai, the auction house said.

Japanese police said Wednesday they have arrested five South Korean men in connection with the theft of an ancient Buddha statue on an island that serves as a stepping stone between the two neighbors.

The men, aged between 42 and 70, are suspected of taking the miniature statue on Monday from a temple on Tsushima, an island that lies between western Japan and the Korean peninsula, a local police official said.

The 1962 Nobel Prize James Watson won for his role in the discovery of the structure of DNA is going on the auction block.

The auctioneer says the gold medal could bring $2.5 million to $3.5 million on Dec. 4.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has received a major gift of works by contemporary African-American artists from the South.

The museum says the donation includes 20 works by female quilters from a remote community in Alabama.

An influential ex-minister surrendered to Bangladesh police Tuesday after Islamists staged protests nationwide calling for his arrest and prosecution over remarks criticizing the annual Muslim Hajj pilgrimage.

Abdul Latif Siddique's surrender came a day after Islamists gave an ultimatum to detain him after he returned home Sunday following a long stay in India and the United States where he called the Muslim ritual Hajj a "waste" of manpower.

A World War II heroine who parachuted behind German lines on "perilous" spy missions, but was so modest she only told her children about it 15 years ago, was Tuesday presented with France's highest honor.

British-born Pippa Doyle, now 93 and living in New Zealand, was awarded the Chevalier de l'ordre national de la Legion d'Honneur, or Knight of the national Order of the Legion of Honour. 

Four South Korean men have been arrested in southern Japan on suspicion of stealing an ancient Buddha statue, police said Tuesday.

The suspects were found Monday evening in possession of a copper Buddha statue that went missing from the Bairinji temple in Tsushima city in Nagasaki prefecture, said Keiichi Matsushita, deputy chief of the South Tsushima division of the Nagasaki police. The statue, measuring about 10 centimeters (4 inches), was found in a paper bag carried by the suspects.