Russia's two greatest art museums were engaged Tuesday in an unsightly public feud over an idea to revive a Moscow museum of Western art that was shut down by Stalin in the late 1940s.

The State Museum of New Western Art gathered the impressionist and early modern art collected by renowned Russian art collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in the late Tsarist era.

Despite significant improvements since the hard-line Taliban ruled Afghanistan, religious freedom remains poor, especially for minorities, and Afghans still can't debate religion or question prevailing Islamic orthodoxies without fear of being punished, a U.S. commission said in a new report on Tuesday.

As the country braces for next year's presidential election and the planned withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014, the panel urges the U.S. government and its allies to work harder to promote religious rights in the war-torn nation.

The China Institute Gallery has been transformed into an ancient cave, taking visitors back more than a millennium to a dazzling world where Buddhist worshipers adorned the walls with colorful frescoes, silk prayer banners and lavishly painted life-size clay sculptures.

"Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road" features a replica of an 8th century cave carved into the limestone cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert southeast of the oasis town of Dunhuang from 366 to about 1300.

A Catholic priest in southeastern Brazil was excommunicated on Monday after publicly resigning from his duties to protest against the church's opposition to homosexuality.

"Father Roberto Francisco Daniel can no longer celebrate the divine rite because he has been excommunicated," a statement from the Bauru diocese in Sao Paulo state said.

Shanghai's contemporary art museum on Sunday opened a show featuring the works of American pop artist Andy Warhol, but without his iconic portraits of former Chinese leader Chairman Mao.

The Pittsburgh-based Andy Warhol Museum, which supplied more than 300 pieces for the show, said months in advance that paintings of Mao Zedong would not be shown in keeping with the wishes of the Chinese hosts.

Having brushed off its dusty old self over the past three years, the Vienna Ballet showed it was prepared to take new risks Saturday, by presenting a string of its own original works.

In a tribute to "Creation and Tradition", the audience was treated to nine pieces, from classical ballet repertoire to ultra modern creations with a hint of "The Matrix."

Five years after it was burned down in an arson attack, South Korea Monday unveiled its newly restored Namdaemun gate, a national treasure painstakingly rebuilt at a cost of millions of dollars.

The cultural jewel in central Seoul will reopen to the public on Saturday, following one of the longest and most expensive restoration projects ever undertaken in South Korea, involving hundreds of highly skilled craftsmen.

The sight of children, the disabled and disadvantaged begging at all hours of the day and night in Pakistan is a grim, constant reminder of the millions who live in abject poverty.

Yet malnourished members of the underclass have to collect not just enough spare change to feed themselves, but to pay off police and gang bosses.

A young Tunisian man given seven years in jail for posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on the Internet has petitioned President Moncef Marzouki for a pardon, his lawyer and relatives said Saturday.

Jabbeur Mejri "prefers to stop court proceedings against him, and hopes instead to be granted a presidential pardon," defense lawyer Ahmed Mselmi told Agence France Presse.

Masterpieces by Vincent van Gogh, including his world-famous "Sunflowers" and "The Potato Eaters", have been returned to the Amsterdam museum that bears the Dutch artist's name ahead of its reopening next week.

The paintings were transferred on Friday to the Van Gogh Museum from another of the Dutch capital's famous museums, the Hermitage, where they had been on display for the last seven months during the renovations.