Dermot Bolger was commissioned in 1993 by a U.S. museum that holds the original manuscript of James Joyce's famed novel -- which chronicles a day in the life of a Dublin man -- to adapt the book for the stage.

After one performance in the United States, the play was left to languish when EU copyright laws suddenly changed and Bolger gave up hope of persuading the protective Joyce estate to let it be performed.

An erotically charged Picasso oil painting of his mistress alongside tulips and fruit sold Thursday for $41.5 million on an otherwise anemic night for high-end art in New York.

"Nature morte aux tulipes," painted in 1932, was the star of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale in Manhattan. The pre-sale estimate for the work had been between $35 million and $50 million.

The Australian state of New South Wales Friday announced a special inquiry to look into claims the Catholic Church covered up for paedophile priests, silenced investigations and destroyed evidence.

The inquiry, announced by state Premier Barry O'Farrell, will examine the allegations made by a senior police investigator who outlined his charges in a letter published in the Newcastle Herald newspaper.

Few archaeological sites seem as entwined with conflict, ancient and modern, as the city of Karkemish.

The scene of a battle mentioned in the Bible, it lies smack on the border between Turkey and Syria, where civil war rages today. Twenty-first century Turkish sentries occupy an acropolis dating back more than 5,000 years, and the ruins were recently demined. Visible from crumbling, earthen ramparts, a Syrian rebel flag flies in a town that regime forces fled just months ago.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Thursday opened a major new Jewish museum in Moscow housed in a converted 1920s bus garage which aims to tell the story of Jews in Russia from Tsarist times through the horror of the Holocaust to the present day.

Peres and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov opened the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center which is based around Moscow's stunning Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed in 1926 by constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov.

Rohingya Muslims' statelessness is at the heart of bloody unrest that has torn through western Myanmar, but experts say the regime is unlikely to risk public ire by lifting them from citizenship limbo.

Rakhine state remains explosively tense after being convulsed by two major outbreaks of fighting involving Buddhist and Muslim communities since June that have left 180 dead and more than 110,000, mainly Rohingya, crammed into makeshift camps.

A painting by Wassily Kandinsky sold for $23 million in New York on Wednesday, setting an auction record for the Russian avant-garde artist.

The oil painting "Studie fur improvisation 8" was a highlight of the big evening sale of impressionist and modern works at Christie's auction house in Manhattan.

Egypt's state prosecutor on Wednesday ordered a ban on Internet pornography, after a previous court order to do so was not implemented.

State prosecutor Abdel Meguid Mahmoud "ordered a block on pornography sites," his office said in a statement.

France's Socialist government Wednesday adopted a draft law to authorize gay marriage and adoption despite fierce opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and the right-wing opposition.

President Francois Hollande, who made the issue a key part of his electoral platform, told a cabinet meeting the move was "not only a step forward for some but for all of society," government spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said.

France's top literary prize, the Goncourt, on Wednesday went to Jerome Ferrari for a Corsican epic, set in a bar on the violence-wracked Mediterranean island.

"Le Sermon de la Chute de Rome" (The Sermon of the Fall of Rome) tells of a young man who packs in his philosophy studies to open a bar with an old friend, with the aim of turning it into a haven of peace and friendship.