It is Iran's most notorious jail, renowned for housing political activists, but if Tehran's mayor has his way Evin Prison will close and be transformed into a public park.

A concrete monstrosity, guarded by razor wire atop high walls on the edge of a highway in the north of the capital, Evin has been a target of reports by rights monitors such as Amnesty International, alleging maltreatment of inmates by authorities there.

A full size replica of parts of Beijing's nationally sensitive Old Summer Palace has opened 1,000 kilometers away from China's capital, state media reported Monday, despite managers of the original threatening legal action.

The vast array of gardens, palaces and lakes in the western suburbs of the Chinese capital was used by Qing dynasty emperors in the 19th Century.

Drivers and millions of commuters used to spending hours in Tehran traffic jams have at least had something nicer to look at during journeys this week: famous works of art.

Advertising hoardings that normally feature the latest smartphones, home appliances or banks and insurance plans have made way -- until May 16 -- for masterpieces by famous artists in a giant urban beautification scheme.

An American museum has returned a 10th-century sandstone statue of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman to Cambodia, decades after it was looted from a jungle temple when the kingdom was in the throes of civil war.

The metre-high statue was stolen in the 1970s from the Koh Ker temple site near the famed Angkor Wat complex. 

Janaki Karmacharya sits on a plastic chair under the tarpaulin that now serves as her office and despairs at the wreckage of her once magnificent library in the heart of Kathmandu.

Until last month's earthquake, the Kaiser Library buzzed with Nepali students, intellectuals and tourists attracted by its collection of rare books, maps and ancient manuscripts -- all housed in an opulent former palace.

A Nigerian art critic and museum director is the first African to curate the Biennale contemporary art fair that opens Saturday for its seven-month run, while female artists are representing more countries than ever in national pavilions — trends seen as an informal rebalancing in the art world.

There's Joan Jonas for the United States, Fiona Hall for Australia, Irina Nakhova for Russia, Sarah Lucas for Great Britain, Chiharu Shiota for Japan, Pamela Rosenkranz for Switzerland and Camille Norment for Norway. And those women are all from the more established Biennale participants in the Giardini, around one-third of the 89 national pavilions.

A signed first edition of "100 Years of Solitude" by Nobel-Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez was recovered Friday, a week after it was stolen at a Colombia book festival, officials said.

The novel by the Colombian writer, who died last year, was snatched from a locked glass case last weekend at the International Book Fair of Bogota. 

Health Minister El Hossein Louardi came out in support of lifting Morocco's ban on abortion, saying women should control their own bodies, in an interview published on Friday.

He spoke to the weekly Tel Quel amid a debate sparked by the fact that hundreds of illegal abortions take place in the kingdom every day.

A Chinese province where authorities have removed hundreds of rooftop crosses from Protestant and Catholic churches has proposed a ban on any further placement of the religious symbol atop sanctuaries.

The draft, if approved, would give authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang solid legal grounds to remove rooftop crosses.

Russian investigators are carrying out a probe into art valuations by experts at one of the country's top museums, Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, a gallery spokeswoman said Wednesday.

"The investigation is continuing outside the gallery's premises,"  spokeswoman Anna Kotlyar told Agence France Presse.