Sotheby's auction house in New York has agreed to return an ancient statue to Cambodia, ending a heated legal battle that began more than a year ago.

The agreement, signed Thursday by lawyers for Sotheby's, the consignor and the U.S. government, states that the auction house will transfer the statue to a representative of Cambodia in New York within 90 days.

A British woman on Wednesday won her fight to get married in a Scientology chapel in London after the Supreme Court ruled that her church could be considered a place of worship.

Louisa Hodkin had been refused permission to wed fiance Alessandro Calcioli in a Church of Scientology chapel in central London because it was not legally listed as a place of religious worship.

The annual "kanji" Chinese character of the year in Japan went to "ring" Thursday, after Tokyo's successful bid to host the 2020 Olympics, often referred to in local print media as "five rings."

In an event televised nationally, the top monk at world-famous Kiyomizu Temple in the ancient capital of Kyoto drew the character with a large calligraphy brush, whose bristles were the size of a bowling pin, on a huge piece of paper.

Senegal's Ousmane Sow, who sculpted Nelson Mandela as a goalkeeper extending his hand "to keep corrupt African heads of state at bay", was on Wednesday honored in his adoptive France.

At a ceremony in Paris, Sow -- the first African to be invited to join France's Academy of Fine Arts -- dedicated the honor to "all of Africa, its diaspora and the great man Nelson Mandela".

Some of the notable figures who have died in the year just ending:

- Nagisa Oshima, Japanese filmmaker, directed "Furyo", aged 80, on January 15.

Lawyers for a young woman whose arrest for wearing a full-face veil sparked riots, argued Wednesday in court that France's contentious ban on such coverings was unconstitutional and targeted Muslims.

The case relates to Cassandra Belin, 20, who was stopped by police in the gritty town of Trappes, west of Paris, on July 18 for wearing the veil in public.

The U.S.-based Annenberg Foundation revealed Wednesday that it had bought 24 sacred objects belonging to the Hopi and San Carlos Apache tribes which were sold Monday in a controversial Paris auction.

"Twenty-one of these items will be returned to the Hopi Nation in Arizona, and three artefacts belonging to the San Carlos Apache will be returned to the Apache tribe," the foundation said in a statement, adding their purchase totaled $530,000 (390,000 euros).

Nativity scene artisans in Italy have taken Pope Francis's social message to heart this Christmas, giving a bigger role to ordinary people in their work and reviving the tradition's simple origins.

Statuettes of disgraced former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi are less and less popular at the bustling San Gregorio Armeno market in Naples, where the new pope is now all the rage.

The Milanese opera house La Scala took another step in its artistic and managerial transition on Tuesday by confirming that Riccardo Chailly will be its new musical director, replacing Daniel Barenboim.

Chailly, 60, currently conductor of the Gewandhaus Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, will be La Scala's principal conductor from 2015 before becoming musical director in 2017.

After Mormon church leaders lifted the ban on blacks in the priesthood in 1978, church leaders offered little official explanation for the reasons behind the ban, saying only they received a revelation it was time for the change.

In the three decades since, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have struggled to understand the roots of the old ban and grappled with how best to respond to questions about the touchy historical topic.