Berlin Wednesday kicks off the reconstruction of its palace, a divisive 590-million-euro ($783 million) project to recreate the baroque architectural jewel whose post-war remnants were razed by communist leaders.

President Joachim Gauck will attend the official laying of the foundation stone for the Berlin Palace, on the city's legendary leafy axis, Unter den Linden, which Prussian princes once called home.

So revered is Nelson Mandela today that it is easy to forget that for decades he was considered a terrorist by many foreign governments, and some of his now supporters.

The anti-apartheid hero was on a U.S. terror watch list until 2008 and while still on Robben Island, Britain's late "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher described his African National Congress as a "typical terrorist organisation."

Russia on Tuesday passed a bill imposing jail terms of up to three years on those who offend religious believers after an anti-Vladimir Putin stunt by punk band Pussy Riot in a church polarized the predominantly Orthodox country last year.

According to the bill passed in a 308-to-2 final vote, "public actions expressing clear disrespect for society and committed with the goal of offending religious feelings of the faithful" would be punishable with jail terms of up to one year in prison and fines of up to 300,000 rubles ($9,200).

Two ancient stone statues that have been on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum for nearly 20 years are being returned to Cambodia.

Cambodian officials and Buddhist monks planned a welcome home ceremony for the 10th-century statues at the country's international airport on Tuesday.

In a provincial music institute a thousand kilometers from Moscow, deep in Russia's Urals, a conductor and his orchestra rehearse as the spring light floods through the windows and the local trams rumble by.

But despite the far-flung location in the city of Perm, these musicians are no provincial journeymen. They are the Greek Teodor Currentzis, 41, one of the world's mostly highly-regarded conductors, and his Musica Aeterna band of Russian and European musicians.

On a tropical island in Papua New Guinea where most people live in huts, a mob armed with guns, machetes and axes stormed a wooden house by night. They seized Helen Rumbali and three female relatives, set the building on fire and took the women away to be tortured. Their alleged crime: Witchcraft.

After being repeatedly slashed with knives, Rumbali's older sister and two teenage nieces were released following negotiations with police. Rumbali, a 40-something former schoolteacher, was beheaded.

They are young, urban and well-educated, and for the past week they have been sleeping in an Istanbul park: meet the women on the frontline of Turkey's mass anti-government protests.

"We are the women Erdogan would like to see staying at home," said actress Sevi Algan, 37, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who protesters say is forcing his conservate, Islamic values on the mainly Muslim but staunchly secular nation.

At the farthest end of the Great Wall, Yang Yongfu limps along the section he arduously restored, in effect "privatizing" it and putting himself on a collision course with the authorities.

The farmer spent five million yuan ($800,000) and years of backbreaking work renovating several hundred meters of the national symbol deep in northwestern China, turning it into a tourist site.

Despite ramming through austerity measures that sparked popular protest in the streets, Spain's right-leaning government seems to be hesitating on a potentially more divisive reform: tightening the abortion law.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party promised, in a manifesto ahead of its 2011 election victory, "to reinforce protection of the right to life".

Romania's homosexual community takes to the streets for a Gay Pride parade on Saturday but a controversial amendment to the constitution banning same-sex marriage threatens to overshadow the event.

Hundreds of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists and sympathizers are expected to join the march in downtown Bucharest, an annual event which in previous years was marred by minor disturbances.