Iran's leaders won't attend events serving alcohol, a diplomat said Wednesday after French media reported that President Hassan Rouhani refused to attend a state dinner in Paris because wine was on the menu.

"According to Islamic values ​​and teachings, officials of the Islamic Republic do not participate in ceremonies where alcohol is served," said the diplomat, who is in charge of protocol at Iran's foreign ministry, according to ISNA news agency.

A taxi driver turned financier, Chinese tycoon Liu Yiqian has stunned the art world with his record-setting purchases, the latest a famed Modigliani nude costing more than $170 million.

"Nu Couche", or "Reclining Nude", painted by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani in 1917-18, sold to Liu after a frantic nine-minute bidding war at a Christie's auction in New York on Monday.

A Chinese collector snapped up a sensuous Modigliani nude for $170.4 million in New York, setting a new world record price at auction for the Italian artist in a bumper Christie's sale.

The evening auction also set world auction records for U.S. pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, whose "Nurse" fetched $95.37 million, as well as for 19th century French painter Gustave Courbet.

Tunisia's President Beji Caid Essebsi Monday hailed the Nobel Peace Prize awarded last month to the National Dialogue Quartet, saying it saved the country from "the specter of civil war."

The prize "paid tribute to the value of dialogue and proved that peaceful revolutions are possible," Essebsi said at a ceremony at the Carthage palace in the outskirts of Tunis.

Pope Francis wants to visit Auschwitz when he visits Poland in July 2016, Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Monday after meeting the pontiff.

The Argentinian pope also expressed a desire to visit a celebrated Catholic shrine at Czestochowa when he visits the city of Krakow to mark World Youth Day, Duda told reporters, according to specialist Vatican news agency I-media.

Some of Britain's gloomy Victorian prisons, including the one where Oscar Wilde was held for homosexuality, could be turned into homes for thousands of people under plans announced by the government on Monday.

The looming 19th century red-brick buildings, which were built close to city centers and are now often in desirable locations, are to be broken up into 3,000 homes. New prisons will then be built to house the inmates.

The Danish editor who commissioned the Mohammed cartoons that triggered deadly protests a decade ago said Monday he was leaving the Jyllands-Posten newspaper to focus on his career as an author and political commentator.

"I want to spend more time writing books and participating in the public debate in Denmark and abroad. The growing diversity in Europe has put freedom under pressure," Flemming Rose told the paper.

At home her son still calls her daddy, at work she dresses in a masculine style, but this Chinese person has a "little secret" -- she was born male, but is not any more.

She had long identified as a woman, and suffered from depression after starting a family, opting in the end to have a surgical sex change.

Turkey's state-owned tea production company has been fined over a TV commercial deemed insulting "ayran", the country's yoghurt-based "national drink", by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

In the commercial for "Didi", a popular iced tea product made by state-owned Caykur, Turkish rap star Ceza sings: "I've tried ayran, it makes me sleepy."

Archeologists in Peru have unearthed a 1,500-year old frieze with human figures believed to be from the indigenous Moche culture, the latest find at a site famous for its pre-Incan treasures.

The discovery, in Peru's northern La Libertad region, was made at the Huaca de la Luna, or Shrine of the Moon, the El Comercio newspaper reported on Sunday.