Unidentified members of an armed group in northern Syria have cut off the head of a statue honoring Abbasid-era poet Abou al-Alaa al-Maari, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday.

"An armed group in the (rebel-held) town of Maaret al-Numan have cut off the head of a sculpture honoring the memory of poet and philosopher Abou al-Alaa al-Maari, who was born in the town," said the Britain-based Observatory.

Behind the bars of a prison on Poland's eastern fringe, a dozen women serving time are lost in concentration as they learn the intricate art of icon-writing in the Orthodox Christian tradition.

The centuries' old craft, which typically displays the Virgin with the baby Jesus, saints and Christ in rich strokes of dark red, green and gold is being used for the first time as part of a social reintegration program at a major correctional facility in Bialystok.

A New Zealand politician has labelled young Muslim men a terrorist threat who should be banned from Western airlines, sparking condemnation from Prime Minister John Key on Tuesday.

Richard Prosser, of the New Zealand First party, also labelled Islam a "stone age religion" in a magazine column, claiming that most terrorists were "angry young Muslim men who hate the West".

Pope Benedict XVI will leave behind a Catholic Church grappling with crises from child abuse scandals involving priests to confronting radical Islam as well as struggling to find its place in an increasingly secular Western world.

German cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who will step down at the end of this month after an eight-year pontificate, was elected pope on April 19, 2005 at a time when anger at clerical abuse was at its height in parts of Europe and North America, shaking the faith of many ordinary Catholics.

The Islamist movement Hamas which rules Gaza has set up its own news agency, called Al Rai (Opinion), the Palestinian territory's Hamas government announced on Monday.

"The first official news agency of the (Hamas) government has been established under the name of Al-Rai agency...under the supervision of the government information office," the office's director Salameh Maaruf told Agence France Presse.

The Pakistani Taliban have warned shopkeepers in a popular market to stop selling "obscene films" and Viagra-style male potency pills.

Shopkeepers told Agence France Presse Monday that they found handwritten pamphlets containing the warnings after opening Saturday in Karkhano market on the edge of the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Founded to care for victims of war, the International Committee of the Red Cross has faced a tough task, sometimes been found wanting, but has always known how to adapt to shifting challenges.

The Swiss-based ICRC marks its 150th anniversary on February 17, making it the world's oldest humanitarian organisation still in existence.

As Indonesia and other countries with Chinese diasporas welcome the Year of the Snake, some Islamic leaders have ignited a religious row by declaring the celebrations "haram" and off limits for Muslims.

After decades of repression under the dictatorship of Suharto, who rose to power after a bloody purge of communists and Chinese in the late 1960s, Chinese-Indonesians are now accepted in mainstream society of the largely Muslim nation.

"Not a day goes by without tombs being vandalized," says Dalmasso Bruno, caretaker of the Italian cemetery in the Libyan capital where Christians fear rising Muslim extremism.

"Human bones have been taken out of their tomb and scattered across the cemetery" in central Tripoli, he said. "The Libyan authorities came and took pictures. They promised to take measures but nothing has been done."

Tens of millions of Hindu pilgrims prepared to cleanse their sins with a plunge into the sacred river Ganges, ahead of the most auspicious day of the world's largest religious festival.

Some 30 million Hindu saints, devotees and visitors were expected to take part in the Kumbh Mela on Sunday -- considered the holiest of the 55-day festival -- in north India, police said.