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.

Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog" and Henry Moore's "Archer" are among some of the world's most iconic sculptures competing for space at a new museum exhibition where one of Alberto Giacometti's signature figurines appears to stride boldly into the room.

It would be a world-class show if the pieces weren't copies made of Styrofoam, using the same techniques for making the floats in Rio's Carnival parades.

The family of an American tank commander who won three historic paintings playing poker during World War II returned the stolen art treasures on Tuesday to their rightful owners.

Two more paintings acquired by a librarian while serving for the U.S. army in Germany in late 1945 were also handed over during a ceremony at the State Department in Washington after the families had contacted a U.S. foundation that tracks down missing artwork.

A Vincent Van Gogh painting fetched more than $66 million at a New York auction on Tuesday, the most paid for a work by the Dutch post-impressionist artist since 1998.

According to the Sotheby's auction firm, Van Gogh's "Les Alyscamps," which depicts a stand of autumnal trees, had been expected to go for around $40 million but ultimately an Asian collector paid $66.3 million after an intense bidding war between five potential buyers.