The sister of the Emir of Qatar was named the most influential figure in the art world in a "power list" published by Britain's ArtReview magazine on Thursday.

Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bint al-Thani has around $1 billion a year to spend on art as head of the Qatar Museums Authority (QMA), according to ArtReview -- 30 times more than New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Saudi Arabia on Thursday warned it will take measures against activists who go ahead with a planned weekend campaign to defy a ban on women drivers in the conservative Muslim kingdom.

"It is known that women in Saudi are banned from driving and laws will be applied against violators and those who demonstrate in support" of this cause, Interior Ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki told AFP.

A decades-long dispute between members of one of India's former royal families over palaces, diamonds and other items worth billions of dollars has been settled, a family member said.

Members of the Gaekwad family Wednesday signed a memorandum of understanding before a judge in the western city of Vadodara over property that includes a palace reportedly four times the size of Britain's Buckingham Palace.

A Facebook petition supporting a Dutch Christmas character called "Black Pete" on Wednesday hit a million 'likes', revealing the liberal nation's attachment to a beloved figure the U.N. has warned may be racist.

Anger over the issue has swept the Netherlands after a U.N. human rights body said it was assessing whether "Zwarte Piet", who accompanies Saint Nicholas during a traditional children's festival before Christmas, is racist.

Saudi female activists are gearing up to test a long-standing driving ban, with more defiant women already getting behind the wheel as the authorities seem to be taking a more lenient approach.

Under the slogan "women's driving is a choice," they have called on social networks for a turn-out on Saturday in a campaign in the world's only country that bans women from driving.

A descendant of Florence's famous Medici family told Agence France Presse on Tuesday that mass tourism was a "threat" to his native city and called for it to be put on a Unesco list of endangered areas.

"There is serious urban degradation, an overuse of the city, an insufficient attention to the artistic heritage of the city," the angry prince, Ottaviano de Medici, said in a statement.

Yoga is moving from the studio mat to a U.S. museum gallery.

The Smithsonian Institution has organized what curators believe is the first exhibition about the visual history and art of yoga, its origins and evolution over time.

The small champagne bar faces the stall selling Afro-Caribbean produce, a stone's throw from the scene of some of London's worst riots. Welcome to Brixton, the once infamous district transformed by gentrification.

Along the roads where hordes of young black men battled police in 1981, wine bars and sushi restaurants have flourished, squats have been cleared and houses are now selling for over £1 million ($1.6 million, 1.2 million euros).

A French court on Tuesday gave the go-ahead for a Franco-Moroccan gay couple to marry, going against a government ruling that homosexuals from Morocco and 10 other countries cannot tie the knot.

France legalized same-sex marriage in May after months of intense and sometimes violent protests, and the couple -- Dominique and Mohammed -- immediately got to work planning their official union for September in the town of Jacob-Bellecombette in the Alps.

From billboards across Nazareth shines the discreet smile of Hanin Zuabi, a controversial Arab woman MP who is hoping voters will chose her as mayor of Israel's largest Arab city.

This 44-year-old former maths teacher, her black hair cut into a sleek bob, is the only woman running for leadership of the sprawling northern city revered by Christians as Jesus' childhood home.