Singapore, one of the world's most densely populated countries, is campaigning to get its 154-year-old Botanic Gardens declared a UNESCO world heritage site.

If selected by the U.N. cultural body, the lush and serene 74-hectare (182-acre) park on the edge of downtown Singapore will join the Royal Botanic Gardens in London and the Orto Botanico in Italy on the prestigious list.

British author Terry Deary is bringing an end to his much-loved "Horrible Histories" series for children after 20 years of the gruesome volumes, he said on Tuesday.

"It has naturally come to an end, the way things do," the 67-year-old told The Times newspaper. "It has had a good run, it's had a better run than most children's series."

A Sri Lankan court Tuesday freed three Buddhist monks and 14 others suspected of torching a Muslim-owned clothing store in an attack that scaled up the country's religious tensions.

In the latest in a wave of attacks targeting minority Muslims, an angry mob of hardline Buddhists vandalized and set fire to the store in a suburb of Colombo, leading police to boost security for Muslim businesses nationwide.

The curtain went up once more at one of Japan's most important theaters on Tuesday after the famous playhouse, dedicated to the centuries-old kabuki performing art, was rebuilt for the fourth time.

An elaborate ceremony involving incantations and large "taiko" drums was held as a big digital countdown clock, installed six months ago, ticked away the last few minutes ahead of the official opening.

Bestselling author Haruki Murakami is to appear at a Q and A session in Japan in May, in a rare public appearance for the publicity-shy but wildly popular writer, its organizer said Tuesday.

Murakami, one of the world's foremost novelists, will be part of a seminar titled "Observe soul, write soul" on May 6 in the ancient city of Kyoto.

A law banning same sex schooling in the Gaza Strip has entered into force, education minister for Hamas, which rules the Palestinian territory, said on Monday.

The law, which was issued on February 10, was approved by the Islamist movement's legislative council and went into effect on Sunday, Osama Mazini told a news conference.

Beginning work a few years ago on her latest book, an anthology of poems for young people, Caroline Kennedy found herself looking through one of her mother's scrapbooks. She burst into laughter, she says, as she came across a poem that her brother John, as a youngster, had picked out and copied as a gift to their poetry-loving mom.

"Willie with a thirst for gore, Nailed his sister to the door," went the poem, by an unknown author. "Mother said with humor quaint, 'Careful, Willie, don't scratch the paint!'"

The new Archbishop of Canterbury warned against "pinning hopes on individuals" to solve all of society's problems in his first Easter Sunday sermon.

Justin Welby said a "hero leader culture" in which all trust was placed in one person only led to false hope.

Pope Francis could be a godsend for his fellow Jesuits in the Czech Republic, where the religious order is still reviled for its brutal re-imposition of Catholicism in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Dogged by a serious image problem ever since, the Jesuits -- known formally as the Society of Jesus -- have just 55 members in the Czech Republic, a largely secular ex-communist EU country of 10.5 million people.

A few places in China give parents a rare right to have two offspring rather than one, but many stop at a single child anyway -- fueling demands to end what critics call an unnecessary, harmful rule.

"If you have too many kids then it becomes difficult," said Lu Xiuyan, a 42-year-old restaurant manager in Jiashan, a dusty village of low-slung buildings a few hours north-east of Beijing, who has one son.