British artist and self-marketing genius Damien Hirst looks to connect the dots in a big way with the opening Thursday of a global show for his body of colored spot paintings.

The Gagosian Gallery network, with 11 locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva and Hong Kong, has been turned over entirely to Hirst's geometric blizzard of round spots.

Rights campaigners and politicians Wednesday condemned a video showing women from a protected and primitive tribe dancing for tourists in exchange for food on India's far-flung Andaman Islands.

British newspaper The Observer released the video showing Jarawa tribal women -- some of them naked -- being lured to dance and sing after a bribe was allegedly paid to a policeman to produce them.

Egyptian Islamists and other activists vowed Wednesday to prevent Israelis from making an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in the Nile Delta.

Pilgrimage opponents have decided to stage protests on roads leading to the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira in the village of Daymouta, 180 kilometers (112 miles) north of Cairo, said Gamal Heshmat of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group which is the country's best organized political movement.

The Washington National Opera announced Tuesday it will present Richard Wagner's monumental four-part "Ring" cycle for the first time in its 56-year history in 2016.

The demanding Ring cycle -- 18.5 hours of music -- will be staged in its entirety three times, the company said in a statement.

Anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela's life story is to be turned into a six-part television mini-series co-created by his grandson, the producers behind the multinational project said Monday.

Entitled "Madiba", Mandela's clan name, the series "will take a broad view of the inner passions and outside forces that guided him," they said in a statement.

San Francisco is launching the 75th anniversary celebration of the iconic Golden Gate Bridge with a string of parties, guided tours and festivals to be held along the waterfront.

Authorities, however, won't be throwing open the orange span for a mass public walk.

It may not be everyone's idea of a dream home, but for bargain hunters in Hong Kong's turbocharged property market apartments that belonged to the recently deceased are proving irresistible -- and the more gruesome the occupant's demise the better.

Popular belief in a city awash with superstition runs that the ghost of a person who dies in unnatural circumstances -- a suicide, murder or bad accident -- inhabits their home, passing misfortune onto the new occupants.

New York City Opera shut its doors Monday after a contract dispute brought a company known for daring modern productions, as well as for nurturing greats such as Placido Domingo, to a halt.

"Rehearsals are canceled until we have a deal. We are taking this one day at a time," Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for New York City Opera, told Agence France Presse in an email. The opera was meant to be rehearsing Verdi's "La Traviata."

As a long career devoted to Taiwan's technology sector draws to a close, Max Fang has turned to an entirely new task -- helping to build a globally competitive film industry on the island.

To this end, 60-year-old Fang has launched a venture capital fund, much as he would do if he were to pour money into new IT start-ups, but with the crucial difference that the fund is solely meant for movie and TV projects.

Madrid's top three art museums -- the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen-Bornemisza -- are gearing up for another good year after drawing a record number of visitors in 2011 despite the weak economy.

Throughout the year crowds of tourists line up outside the ticket offices of the three museums, which are all within an easy walk of one another on the central Paseo del Prado in the so-called "Golden Triangle of Art".