A 16th century religious tapestry stolen from a Spanish cathedral in 1979 and sold at auction three years ago for $369,000 was returned to Spain on Wednesday by the US customs service.

In a statement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said special agents from its Homeland Security Investigations unit seized the artifact last November from the unidentified Texas business that had bought it.

A letter written in prison by Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish army captain whose dismissal more than a century ago on trumped-up charges of spying triggered a protracted national crisis in France, is to be sold at auction in Paris.

Written to the interior ministry in 1895, a month after he was sentenced for treason, the letter will be sold by Sotheby's in Paris on May 29 and is expected to fetch between 100,000 and 150,000 euros ($130,000 and $190,000), the auction house said in a statement.

The Gambia introduced a raft of new laws on Tuesday criminalizing male prostitution, cross-dressing and the singing of abusive songs in public.

The move reflects the "current socio-political realities" in the impoverished west African nation, Justice Minister Lamin Jobarteh told parliament, before lawmakers signed off on amendments to the criminal code act which also outlaw being irritating in public and "refusing to maintain" oneself.

New Zealand's gay community was gearing up Wednesday to celebrate the legalisation of same-sex marriage, which would make the country the first in the Asia-Pacific region to approve the measure.

Parliament will vote late Wednesday on a bill to amend the 1955 Marriage Act to describe marriage as a union of two people regardless of their sex, sexuality or how they choose to identify their gender.

A new survey from Somalia says the practice of female genital mutilation is on the decline.

The survey released Tuesday by UNICEF and the governments of Somaliland and Puntland found that 25 percent of girls ages 1 to 14 have undergone the practice, compared to 99 percent of women.

His graffiti once plastered Hong Kong, dense black ink calligraphy applied with a brush to any public surface, telling the outlandish story of why he believed the territory belonged to him.

The self-declared "King of Kowloon", Tsang Tsou-choi, lived in poverty but became a local hero and internationally renowned artist, creating around 55,000 outdoor works over five decades on everything from post boxes to flyovers.

There was a time when a constellation of Jewish Egyptian stars shone on the country's arts and music scene, and when streets in Cairo and Alexandria brimmed with Jewish shops.

But by the turn of the 21st century, Egypt's Jews had become a faded memory, their synagogues empty and their old neighborhoods offering scant testimony to a once-thriving community.

Poland's chief rabbi on Sunday unveiled a special prayer case at a new Polish Jews museum, days before its opening on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

"With the Mezuzah here, it really means we're at home," Rabbi Michael Schudrich said of the case, containing a scroll inscribed with a Hebrew prayer to protect the hearth.

Here's a list "Fifty Shades of Grey" was destined to make: The books most likely to be removed from school and library shelves in the U.S.

On Monday, E L James' multimillion selling erotic trilogy placed No. 4 on the American Library Association's annual study of "challenged books," works subject to complaints from parents, educators and other members of the public. The objections: Offensive language, and, of course, graphic sexual content.

The future of Nigeria's rich theater legacy, built over decades by artists including Africa's first Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka, may be found off stage.

Theater has been central to some of the defining campaigns in Nigerian history, including the push for independence in 1960, but it is now a struggling art, with actors warning that their industry is in danger.