A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong has suddenly been demolished, apparently for lacking government approval, state media said Friday, days after images of it went viral.

Images of the statue of a seated Mao towering some 37 meters (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan made worldwide headlines this week.

British school examinations are to be timetabled in order not to disadvantage students from the Muslim minority observing Ramadan, exam boards said Wednesday.

GCSEs, taken by 16-year-olds, and A-Levels, taken by 18-year-olds, in core subjects such as English and mathematics could be set for the beginning of the exam season, before the start of Ramadan, which begins this year in early June.

One year after a jihadist attack wiped out most of its staff, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday published a typically provocative special edition featuring a gun-toting God, sparking protests from the Vatican.

The cover of the anniversary edition features a bloodstained, bearded God-figure in sandals with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder under the headline: "One year on: the killer is still at large."

French musical giant Pierre Boulez, a prolific composer and conductor who was a keen proponent of contemporary music, has died aged 90, his family said Wednesday.

"For all those who knew him and who appreciated his creative energy, his artistic rigor, his openness and his generosity, his presence will remain alive and intense," the family said in a statement from the Philharmonie de Paris, which Boulez spearheaded.

A landmark deal between South Korea and Japan to end a decades-old feud over wartime sex slaves is struggling to overcome a diminutive but daunting obstacle in the form of the small statue of a teenage girl.

"I am here to defend the peace monument," 22-year-old Jung Woo-Ryung defiantly declared, as she stood guard Tuesday beside the seated bronze figure that was erected on the pavement opposite the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011.

A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong has been erected in open countryside by a group of capitalists at a cost of 3 million yuan ($460,000), reports said.

The statue towers some 37 meters (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan and shows the man who ruled China with an iron grip for nearly three decades seated in thoughtful repose, his hands crossed.

The Islamic-rooted government of Turkey will give civil servants time off work to attend the weekly Friday prayers in mosques, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Tuesday. 

China's ruling Communist party has tightened its ban on members believing in "feudal superstitions", state media said, as part of new regulations on discipline.

President Xi Jinping, whose power derives from his position as the ruling party's general secretary, has been tightening his control on the organisation in recent months alongside a much-publicised anti-corruption drive.

A Cairo court has acquitted an Egyptian writer who had faced a possible jail sentence for publishing sexually explicit material that allegedly violated public morals.

Mahmoud Othman, a lawyer representing author Ahmed Naji, says the writer and Tarek el-Taher, the editor-in-chief of Egypt's top literary magazine, were acquitted Saturday.

A French academic and an MP published online Friday the famous diary of Anne Frank, despite a dispute with rights holders as to whether the work is now in the public domain.

The duo claim "Diary of a Young Girl" became public property on January 1 as 70 years had elapsed since Frank's death at the age of 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.