Georgia on Sunday reopened a world-renowned medieval cathedral in the ex-Soviet state's second city Kutaisi which has been restored despite concerns raised by global cultural agency UNESCO.

The consecration ceremony was attended by Georgian Orthodox Patriarch Ilia II and President Mikheil Saakashvili as well as representatives of opposition parties which are challenging the ruling United National Movement in crucial elections on October 1.

The Maldives government rejected Sunday a ban on dancing in public between men and women called by its own Islamic Affairs ministry and pledged that the honeymoon hotspot would remain a beacon of tolerance.

Presidential spokesman Abbas Riza said a circular issued by the ministry prohibiting dancing between men and women was not enforceable as it had no basis in Maldivian law.

Myanmar grew used to international criticism under a notoriously brutal junta, but reformist leaders tackling the fallout from deadly communal unrest are facing a new reality -- having to listen.

Festering animosity between Buddhists and Muslims in western Rakhine state erupted in June leaving, according to official figures, nearly 90 dead.

More than 30,000 tearful mourners attended the elaborate, flower-strewn funeral in South Korea Saturday of their "messiah" and controversial Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon.

Moon died of complications from pneumonia on September 3 aged 92.

The Maldives on Thursday moved to limit dancing in public between men and women, an official and a report said, amid signs of the growing influence of the nation's hardline religious party.

The Islamic affairs ministry sent a circular "to all government institutions banning the holding of any mixed-gender dance events", the private Minivan newspaper said, quoting guidelines issued on Thursday.

President Vladimir Putin has urged the creation of a new sense of patriotism to serve as the basis of Russia's future to replace the vacuum left by the fall of the ideologically driven USSR.

Putin -- who has made restoring Russia's great-power status a chief aim of his rule -- said the country had forgotten to construct a sense of national pride and lashed out at opponents who "pour shit" over its name.

Sculptor El Anatsui, who was born in Ghana and lives and creates in Nigeria, has mined Africa's history and culture to carve, mold and weave forms that captivate viewers around the world.

"When I set out to do work, I want something that would arrest people at least, draw them closer, so they can decide for themselves whether it's really beautiful," he told art-lovers last week in Denver, Colorado.

A prominent Jewish rights group expressed fears Thursday of "another blood libel" against Jews stemming from a film mocking Islam that triggered riots in Muslim countries.

The amateur film denigrating the Prophet Mohammed was promoted by evangelical and Coptic Christians living in the United States, and the suspected producer is a Coptic Christian living in California.

A veteran Turkish journalist has characterized the World War I massacre of Armenians in his country as genocide in a new book, defying the government's stance on the sensitive issue.

Hasan Cemal -- a columnist with the Milliyet daily, and the grandson of WWI Ottoman Empire general Cemal Pasha -- lays out the evolution of his thinking on the issue in the book "1915: The Armenian Genocide".

"Have you ever seen any place in the world more wonderful?" swoons Grace Kelly, after whizzing round a hairpin bend above Monaco in an open-top car with Cary Grant, in the 1955 classic "To Catch a Thief."

The same hillside road would cost Kelly her life on September 14, 1982, yet 30 years on the Hollywood actress-turned-princess still symbolises the tiny Mediterranean principality she helped turn into an international jet set Mecca.