Thousands of pro-choice campaigners converged on the Spanish capital Saturday to voice their opposition to a government plan to restrict access to abortion in the mainly Catholic country.

Demonstrators shouting slogans and carrying banners that read "It's my right, It's my life" crowded around a Madrid station to greet a "freedom train" of activists from northern Spain for the country's first major protest against the plan.

Mary Scanlon had no idea a $3 purchase from a Goodwill resale store in Phoenix would turn out to be a rare link to the civil rights movement's most revered leader.

Last April, Scanlon was at the thrift store when she spotted a pile of 35 vintage reel-to-reel tapes, including one labeled with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s name. Despite the moldy and torn packaging, she snapped up all of them.

A glimmer of hope surfaced in the effort to keep the Houston Astrodome —the world's first multipurpose domed stadium — from being torn down with its addition this week to the National Register of Historic Places.

But the designation alone will not be enough to prevent the demolition of the so-called "Eighth Wonder of the World," according to officials.

The formal process to build a library housing President Barack Obama's presidential records and artifacts began Friday with the formation of a new foundation, launched by top supporters with Obama's blessing, that will develop and build the monument to his legacy.

The nonprofit Barack H. Obama Foundation will be led by Marty Nesbitt, a close Obama friend from Chicago, and Julianna Smoot, a former White House social secretary and top official in Obama's re-election campaign.

The brutal aftermath of the once euphoric Egyptian revolution is on stark display in a powerful New York exhibition that lays bare grief, death and shattered hopes.

Three years after protests first erupted across the Arab world, ultimately deposing autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, the hopes of millions now lie stagnant or in tatters.

Want to sell that masterpiece for a fortune? It might help if it's red.

That's just one trend from an art market that has come roaring back from the global financial crisis, with buyers from emerging markets such as China molding tastes and driving top-end prices ever higher.

Fireworks illuminated the skies across Asia and millions of families gathered together Friday to usher in the Year of the Horse, kicking off a week of celebrations that included a performance by Braveheart actress Sophie Marceau on China's annual televised gala.

Residents from China's small towns and villages to its sprawling megacities rang in the Lunar New Year, the country's most important holiday, by indulging in feasts of dumplings and rice cakes and exchanging hongbao, red envelopes stuffed with "lucky money".

Citizens of Venezuela's socialist revolution have grown accustomed to long lines for everything from bread to buying a car.

But 26-year-old Daniela Rodriguez hopes this line will be her last.

Venerable art auctioneer Sotheby's bowed to pressure from activist shareholders Wednesday, announcing a $300 million special dividend, a restructuring of operations and possible property sales.

Three months after its management and strategy came under assault by hedge fund Third Point's founder Dan Loeb and other activists, Sotheby's said it will also spend $150 million on a share buyback program beginning this year.

One of Europe's oldest Yiddish theaters, the State Jewish Theater of Bucharest, has been forced to close down after its roof was damaged by the snowstorms sweeping Romania.

"This is a disaster. About 30 percent of the theater roof has been destroyed. The stage is covered with water from the melting snow as well as the underground deposits where we keep the sets," the director of the theater, actress Maia Morgenstern told Agence France Presse.