A Saudi woman defied the kingdom's ban on female driving, getting behind the wheel of her husband's car before police detained the couple and fined the man, a newspaper said Sunday.

The 23-year-old woman was caught driving on Thursday in the Qatif district in Eastern Province, the Saudi Gazette said, adding police forced the couple to sign a pledge not to repeat the offence.

Colombia will pay special tribute to its late native son, the Nobel-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with a solemn ceremony Tuesday.

The memorial, led by President Juan Manuel Santos, will be held in Bogota's Primada Cathedral, the country's culture ministry tweeted Saturday.

With a nighttime procession lit by the glimmer of devotional candles and the flash of smartphone cameras, a church in Turkish-held northern Cyprus hosted its first Easter mass in nearly 60 years. 

Hundreds of Greek Cypriots crossed the Green Line to attend the ceremony at Famagusta's church of St George Exorinos, in the part of the Mediterranean island occupied by Turkish forces since 1974.

The death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez has brought his classic "One Hundred Years of Solitude" to the top of best seller lists.

The novel known for its "magic realism" was No. 1 on Amazon.com on Friday, a day after Garcia Marquez died at age 87. The Nobel laureate's most famous book was No. 3 on BarnesandNoble.com. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide since coming out in the 1960s.

Trials, suffering, resurrection: the essence of Easter has a special ring to Greeks as the country hopes to pull through a painful six-year recession.

In churches around the country, religious symbolism takes on a very practical relevance for those still struggling from four years of austerity, ever since the country nearly went bankrupt in 2010.

Egypt has foiled an attempt to smuggle out of the country Jewish antiquities used during religious ceremonies, the antiquities ministry said on Friday.

The artefacts were discovered in the Mediterranean city of Damietta as they were about to be shipped to Belgium, a ministry statement said.

Thousands of Guatemalan Catholics broke their own Guinness record for the world's longest sawdust carpet Thursday with a multi-colored masterpiece stretching down the main avenue of the capital's historic center.

Completed in anticipation of Easter, it was more than 2,000 meters long (6,600 feet) and constructed of dyed sawdust and flowers.

Haruki Murakami's first collection of short stories in nine years hit the shelves in Japan on Friday with some excited fans queuing for the midnight launch.

Around 70 fans took part in a countdown ceremony at Kinokuniya bookstore in Tokyo's entertainment and shopping district of Shinjuku, where firecrackers were set off as the clock ticked to the witching hour.

Thousands of people flocked to rural fields in the Philippines on Friday to witness the gruesome spectacle of men being crucified in their annual Easter re-enactment of the death of Jesus Christ.

The ritual, held every year to mark Good Friday in Asia's bastion of Catholicism, has been going on for decades, becoming a major tourist draw despite official disapproval from Church leaders.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel-winning Colombian author who used magical realism to tell epic stories of love, family and dictatorship in Latin America, died Thursday at the age of 87.

Known affectionately as "Gabo," the author of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera" became one of the most popular Latin American novelists in the world and the godfather of a literary movement that witnessed a continent in turmoil.