Inside an old Saint Petersburg apartment that was once home to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a new exhibition plunges visitors into the dark and complex world of "Crime and Punishment", shedding new light on one of Russia's greatest literary works 150 years after its publication.

Located in the heart of Russia's former imperial capital, the exhibit explores the depths of a novel which won critical acclaim when first published in 1866 and went on to become one of Dostoyevsky's best-known works. 

A South African cabinet minister on Wednesday slammed as "illegal" a new scholarship scheme for female students who must pass virginity tests during the holidays to receive grant money.

Uthukela municipality near Durban city last month awarded "maidens' bursaries" to 16 university students on condition they remain virgins until they completed their studies.

Pope Francis came under fire Wednesday after lavishing praise on China in a move widely seen as oiling the wheels of Vatican moves to improve relations with Beijing.

Close watchers of the Holy See were taken by surprise by the content of an interview with the Asia Times in which the Argentinian pontiff said the world need not fear China's growing power and avoided any mention of human rights or the restrictions on Catholics and other Christians' freedom of worship in the world's most populous nation.

A court in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday overturned a death sentence against a Palestinian poet convicted of apostasy, giving him eight years in prison instead, his lawyer said.

The court in the southwestern city of Abha "overturned the previous sentence to execute him for apostasy," the lawyer for Ashraf Fayad said in a statement he posted on Twitter.

Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei will create an artwork in Germany from 14,000 life jackets discarded by migrants arriving on Greece's Lesbos island, local authorities said on Tuesday.

"Island mayor Spiros Galinos has provided 14,000 life jackets for the creation of an artwork in Berlin by globally renowned artist Ai Weiwei," the town said in a statement.

Japan says it has found no evidence its WWII government and military forcibly rounded up women to be sex slaves, Tokyo has told a U.N. committee, the latest pronouncement in a corrosive row over interpretations of history. 

The confirmation Tuesday, ahead of a conference on women later this month, is likely to renew anger among the dwindling number of surviving former "comfort women", who say the country has never taken full responsibility for what it did in wartime.

India's top court agreed Tuesday to review a decision which criminalizes gay sex, sparking hope among campaigners that the colonial-era law will eventually be overturned in the world's biggest democracy. 

The Supreme Court's three most senior judges accepted a last-ditch challenge against a 2013 decision reimposing the ban, which is stipulated in India's criminal code and enables the jailing of homosexuals.

Art historians on Monday revealed that a painting stored for decades at an American museum was in fact a work by Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch.

The surprise discovery comes as 's-Hertogenbosch, the hometown of the artist whose nightmarish visions on canvas earned him the moniker of "the devil's painter", marks the 500th anniversary of his death. 

Czech archeologists have unearthed an ancient funerary boat near the Abusir pyramids south of Cairo, officials said Monday, in a discovery that could shed light on shipbuilding in ancient Egypt.

The discovery of the more than 4,500-year-old remains of the wooden vessel, which archaeologists believe belonged to a prominent member of society, was made at the Abusir South cemetery, an antiquities ministry statement said.

Internationally acclaimed Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has accused the European Union of turning a blind eye to the state of democracy in Turkey because of its cooperation in the migration crisis, local media reported on Sunday.

"They have forgotten all their values," Pamuk told the Hurriyet newspaper in an interview, referring to the EU, adding that the fight against the Islamic State group and the migrant crisis had "tied Europe's hands."