Russia President Vladimir Putin came under criticism from rights activists on Tuesday after he compared Vladimir Lenin's embalmed corpse to the holy relics of Christian saints.

In a Monday speech before a group of supporters, Putin spoke against the idea of removing Lenin's mausoleum from Red Square in Moscow where his corpse is housed.

Despite living much of their lives behind a veil, some Afghan women are feeling pressure to conform to ideals of female beauty and are lining up for cosmetic surgery at a handful of clinics in Kabul.

A few years ago, most operations would have been to repair war wounds or scars from family violence, acid attacks or attempts at self-immolation by women driven to despair by hard times in a male-dominated society.

With the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam closed for renovations, the world's second-largest collection of the tortured Dutch master's work is stepping into the limelight.

The lesser-known Kroeller-Mueller museum in the eastern Netherlands has revamped the layout of its central rooms, giving more space and focus to many of its top works.

Believers of the Mayan calendar prediction that the world will end on December 21 have flooded into a small village in western Turkey, near the ancient Greek city of Ephesus.

Some New Age spiritualists are convinced of a December 21 "doomsday" foretold by Mayan hieroglyphs -- at least according to some interpretations.

China's "most inclusive" dictionary is set to expand by nearly a third to nearly half a million entries across 25 volumes, state media reported on Tuesday.

It will take seven years to fully revise the Hanyu Da Cidian, first published in 1986, for its second edition, the state news agency Xinhua said, with the first volume due to be released in 2015.

Condemned as heretics, a community of around 200 Shiite Muslims have for months lived as pariahs in a sports hall, driven from their Indonesian village after a deadly clash with Sunnis.

In August, a mob of hundreds armed with sickles and swords hacked a Shiite man to death and torched more than 30 houses, forcing villagers to seek refuge at the sports hall.

Russia's renowned Hermitage museum warned of a return to Soviet-era repression of artists after local prosecutors said they were checking one of its exhibits for extremism.

The Saint Petersburg museum came under fire last week for hosting an exhibition by Britain's Jake and Dinos Chapman, visual artists known for their epic installations of little figurines in violent scenes.

Devoured by a giant squash, engulfed by flood or flames, frozen in a nuclear winter or new ice age, mankind has looked to The End with fear and fascination since the dawn of civilization.

Nature's cycles -- day succeeding night, the four seasons -- long fed fears of being plunged into eternal darkness, or an endless winter.

The skyline of Chile's capital has been altered over the past year by a skyscraper -- the tallest in South America and one so towering it casts a shadow nearly two kilometers (more than a mile) long.

The 70-story Gran Torre Costanera Center, a giant that dwarfs the city's other skyscrapers, overwhelms the view of a city founded in 1541 by Spanish conquistadors and that remains proud of its colonial-era buildings.

A breakthrough year for "brand Korea" -- led by the rapper Psy and electronics giant Samsung -- has boosted efforts to promote a country that still feels overshadowed, under-appreciated and misunderstood.

While some may question the benefit of a chubby thirty-something and his horse-riding dance becoming your best-known cultural export, the phenomenal success of Psy's "Gangnam Style" undoubtedly raised the national profile.