Russia's famous Mariinsky theater in Saint Petersburg was to inaugurate a new ballet and opera house on Thursday in an event coinciding with the 60th birthday of its hugely ambitious and well-connected director Valery Gergiev.

The new Mariinsky-2 theater will open with a gala on Thursday night conducted by Gergiev with star performers from across the world, and with Russian President Vladimir Putin expected in the audience.

A unique 2,000-year-old stone tablet takes center stage at an exhibition that opened in Jerusalem on Wednesday and traces depictions of the Archangel Gabriel in Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures.

In the three so-called Abrahamic religions, Gabriel typically serves as a messenger to humans from God.

Brazilian contemporary art takes center stage at Sotheby's in New York this month in the latest sign of the South American giant's global rise.

The "Brasil Vivido" selling exhibition includes some 50 works by 16 artists and will take place at the prestigious auction house May 10-29.

Turkish Airlines has banned air hostesses from wearing brightly-colored lipsticks such as red or pink, a move which has sparked fierce debate as the government is accused of trying to Islamize the country, local media reported Wednesday.

Numerous women posted pictures of themselves wearing bright red lipstick on social media websites to protest at the measure, part of a new aesthetics code for stewardesses working for Turkey's main airline.

A U.S. government-appointed panel urged Washington Tuesday to step up pressure on Pakistan over religious freedom, warning that risks to its minorities have reached a crisis level.

In an annual report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also raised concerns about what it called a worsening situation in China, as well as problems in Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and other nations.

Japan's Mount Fuji will likely be added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites next month after an influential advisory panel to the U.N. cultural body made a recommendation, officials said Wednesday.

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a consultative body to UNESCO, told the Japanese government that the almost perfectly conical Fuji is appropriate for registering as a World Heritage site, the agency for cultural affairs said in a statement.

A U.S. panel criticized Western European countries Tuesday for "aggressive secularism" as it released a report on religious freedom that took aim at laws banning full-face veils in public.

For the first time, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom -- whose members are appointed by the government -- included a chapter on the region in its annual review of tolerance of other faiths around the world.

Vietnam's first gay sitcom has become a YouTube sensation, racking up millions of views as support for legalizing same-sex marriage strengthens within the communist government.

Homosexuality was once seen as a social evil in Vietnam and the success of "My Best Gay Friends", a low-budget series about three people sharing an apartment in southern Ho Chi Minh City, has taken even its creator by surprise.

A majority of Muslims around the world want sharia law to be implemented in their countries but are split on how it should be applied, a Pew Research Center study has found.

A comprehensive study titled "The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society" conducted between 2008 and 2012 focused on 38,000 people in 39 countries and territories drawn from a global Muslim community of 2.2 billion people.

Russia's two greatest art museums were engaged Tuesday in an unsightly public feud over an idea to revive a Moscow museum of Western art that was shut down by Stalin in the late 1940s.

The State Museum of New Western Art gathered the impressionist and early modern art collected by renowned Russian art collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in the late Tsarist era.