A two-metre high statue of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has been daubed with paint less than a day after it was put up in a town in eastern Georgia, local authorities said Monday.

Local authorities in the town of Telavi, some 100 kilometres east of Tbilisi, said the monument to the Georgian-born Communist dictator was erected without permission by local residents on Sunday and could be torn down.

An infamous Papua New Guinea cult leader known as "Black Jesus" was castrated by an angry mob after being hacked to death for killing young girls as sacrifices, reports said Monday.

Steven Tari, a convicted rapist who was suspected of cannibalism, was killed in a remote PNG village last week, with gory details of his death emerging.

An Italian local politician has alleged the Doge's Palace in Venice was damaged to install an air-conditioning system demanded by a French museum for a rare Manet exhibition that closed on Sunday.

Franco Rocchetta, a former junior foreign minister, has filed a formal police complaint over the exhibition which included the Musee d'Orsay's "Olympia" on its first trip away from Paris since 1890.

A new platform at the Western Wall intended for mixed-gender prayer has sparked objections from egalitarian groups. Critics say it favors a separatist solution to the ongoing debate over what prayer rights women should enjoy at one of Judaism's most sacred sites.

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Israel's religious services minister, Naftali Bennett, revealed the temporary 4,800 square-foot platform on Sunday at Robinson's Arch, a site adjacent to the Wall.

Rome's MAXXI art museum said Thursday it wanted a bigger role on the world stage with the appointment of its new Chinese-born artistic director Hou Hanru.

The contemporary art and architecture museum, housed in a building designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid, has been plagued with financial troubles.

Venice has teemed with boats for centuries but a tragic gondola death has stirred anger on the canals and could change the face of the floating city's most famous waterway.

As the tourist's funeral was held on Friday in Germany with a delegation of gondoliers, tensions have risen between the boater-hatted sailors and pilots of "vaporetto" ferries that ply the island city.

An infamous cult leader known as "Black Jesus", who was suspected of cannibalism, has been chopped to death in a remote Papua New Guinea village, reports said Friday.

Steven Tari, a convicted rapist, had been on the run since escaping from a prison in Madang in the Pacific nation's east during a mass break-out with 48 others in March.

A two-hour drive from the French coast, Paris sets up an artificial seashore on the banks of the Seine each summer and while the beach may be fake, the seagulls overhead turn out to be real.

And the birds don't leave when the stretches of sand and deckchairs are removed ahead of the autumn chill.

The U.N.'s cultural organisation on Thursday urged Syria's regime and rebels to spare multi-millennial heritage that is being ravaged by shelling, theft and illegal digs.

"I urge all parties to take the necessary measures to prevent further damage to this heritage, which is among the most precious in the Islamic world," UNESCO chief Irina Bokova said.

Liberia's main public university said on Wednesday all 25,000 applicants for the new academic year had failed its entrance exam, prompting the president to describe poor education standards in the impoverished nation as a "national emergency".

The University of Liberia, which educates more than half of the country's students in the capital Monrovia, said it had been forced to admit 1,600 failed candidates for the new term which begins next month.