The Auschwitz museum at the site of the former Nazi German death camp in southern Poland said Monday it had launched online Holocaust awareness programs in Arabic and Farsi.

"We want to address groups of people who often have little knowledge of this subject or who even advocate revisionist views," museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told Agence France Presse.

Culture budgets in Italy have been drastically cut back in recent years, with spending on upkeep of monuments falling by more than half since 2008, a damning report said on Monday.

The Federculture association's report said the cash-strapped city of Rome had reduced spending on culture to 2.23 percent of its budget in 2012 from 4.33 percent in 2002 and would cut transfers further by up to 50 percent this year.

The Bolshoi Theatre on Monday presented its new musical director who has been appointed to help restore the tarnished reputation of the scandal-ridden theatre.

Tugan Sokhiev, a 36-year-old conductor who studied in Saint Petersburg, is currently musical director of the Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse (ONCT) and of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO Berlin).

Arab bloggers on Monday discussed ways to boost cyberactivism at a meeting in the Jordanian capital, faced with new challenges three years after the start of Internet-fueled revolts in their region.

"Discussions today included digital security and how to defend ourselves through the Internet," Leila Nachawtai, a media coordinator at the launch of the Fourth Arab Bloggers Summit, told Agence France Presse.

Culture budgets in Italy have been drastically cut back in recent years, with spending on upkeep of monuments falling by more than half since 2008, a damning report said on Monday.

The Federculture association's report said the cash-strapped city of Rome had reduced spending on culture to 2.23 percent of its budget in 2012 from 4.33 percent in 2002 and would cut transfers further by up to 50 percent this year.

A bottle of malt whisky has gone under the hammer in Hong Kong for the record-breaking sum of HK$4.9 million ($628,205), an auction house says.

The Macallan 'M' Decanter 6-liter Imperiale attracted global interest at a Sotheby's auction, the firm said in a statement which identified the buyer only as an Asian private collector.

Pope Francis' newly chosen Spanish cardinal, 84-year-old Fernando Aguilar, has described homosexuality as a "defect" that can be corrected with treatment, sparking condemnation from gay rights groups.

"A lot of people complain and don't tolerate it but with all respect I say that homosexuality is a defective way of manifesting sexuality, because that has a structure and a purpose, which is procreation," Aguilar told Malaga newspaper Sur.

The sun has not yet come up, but hundreds of people -- cloaked in white shrouds and chanting biblical hymns -- are already gathered at the holy baths in northern Ethiopia to celebrate Timkat.

By mid-morning the sombre mood has turned jovial, and scores of people disrobe to submerge themselves in the blessed waters flanked by priests dressed in long, gold-embroidered gowns and towering headdresses.

A new Asian diplomatic row broke out Monday after China unveiled a memorial to a Korean national hero who assassinated a Japanese official a century ago -- with Tokyo condemning him as a "terrorist".

China fired back by hailing the man, Ahn Jung-Geun, as "a famous anti-Japanese high-minded person".

Pope Francis has looked beyond the usual Vatican circles for new cardinals and overhauled the governance of the Vatican bank at the start of a year that heralds key reforms for the Roman Catholic Church.

Even some measures that appear limited in scope, like the curtailment of the honorific "monsignor" title and a cut in costs for sainthood applications, are being seen as signals of a will to overhaul the Vatican.