Renowned Syrian sculptor Wael Qastoun has been tortured to death in the flashpoint central of city of Homs, an artists' association said on Tuesday.

A statement released by the Syrian Coalition of Artists for Freedom said Qastoun "died under torture."

Fresh air, fine wine and world-class performers are pulling the crowds to Bordeaux's wine country for an ever-rising number of summer jazz and classical concerts in the French region.

"It's a trend, and it works. It attracts people who are not the usual jazz music audience," the pianist Francois Faure said as he stepped off stage at the Saint Emilion Jazz festival this week.

Bent over strips of blotting paper, senses primed and notebooks in hand: this is how generations of "noses" have honed their art at the world-famous Givaudan perfumery school near Paris.

Fully one third of all fine fragrances created worldwide owe their existence to alumni of the school, which has been training young men and women in the subtle art since 1946 in the bland suburb of Argenteuil.

Vandals have desecrated 57 tombs containing the remains of around 250 people at a Jewish cemetery in Hungary, Jewish groups said Monday.

"This is clearly motivated by racism," Laszlo Rona, who heads the association of Jewish communities in Kaposvar in southwest Hungary where the incident took place over the weekend, told the MTI national news agency.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday said married couples should sit down and talk about their problems with "utmost sincerity" on a regular basis to get past the bustle and individualism of daily life.

Marriages "have problems and difficulties, surrounded as they are by growing secularization", the pope said in a message for a meeting in Brazil of the "Equipes Notre Dame" movement founded in 1938 by French priest Henri Caffarel.

"Here it is, the little wonder, our 'Chypre' from 1917," whispers the cellar-master as he plunges a paper strip into a vial, one of the many treasures at a one-of-its-kind library of world perfume.

The century-old fragrance by Francois Coty is in illustrious company, with to one side the 14th-century "Water of the Queen of Hungary" and to the other the Cologne water that Napoleon Bonaparte used in exile on Saint Helena, dated 1815.

The giant sets of the Cinecitta studios in Rome -- from 19th century New York to Renaissance Florence -- are a slice of world cinema history that workers picketing outside say is disappearing forever.

The iconic 1930s facade has been covered by a giant banner reading "Occupy Cinecitta" and international directors including Britain's Ken Loach and France's Claude Lelouch are getting behind a campaign to preserve the site.

Yale University, one of the leading centers of liberal education in the United States, on Friday defended controversial restrictions on protests and political parties at its new Singapore campus.

Yale-NUS College, a partnership with the National University of Singapore, was launched with "full awareness" of the city-state's laws governing freedom of expression, Yale University President Richard Levin said.

Nearly 100,00O Muslim worshippers poured into Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City for the first Friday prayers of the holy month of Ramadan, an Israeli police spokesman said.

"Nearly 100,000 Palestinians from the West Bank" and east Jerusalem "were at the Temple Mount for prayers," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, adding that no disturbances were reported.

Frustrated by the lack of old Bollywood glamour on the streets of Mumbai, two film buffs are trying to brighten up India's movie capital with mural tributes ahead of the industry's 100th birthday.

The iconic image of a reclining, cigarette-smoking young Amitabh Bachchan, the biggest star of Hindi cinema, has been lovingly recreated on a roadside wall, replicating the dying style of hand-painted poster art.