More than 22,000 youngsters -- from China to Canada -- took to the stage as a single choir Friday in the small Baltic republic of Estonia, where music is seen as a bedrock of the national identity.

A total of 22,239 performers gave the opening performance of a three-day song and dance festival, tapping into an unbroken tradition stretching back almost 150 years, organisers said.

At the international airport in Chongqing in southwest China, travelers are greeted with a massive sign inviting them to "sing red songs" and spread the Communist party's good word.

Thirty-five years after the death of Mao Zedong, the revolutionary spirit is alive and thriving in this teeming province-sized mega-city, despite the more capitalist leanings adopted by the world's second-largest economy.

With the aim of promoting cultural exchange week between the Canadian and Lebanese communities, the McGill Alumni Association in Lebanon organized “McGill Maple Syrup Week” at the American University of Beirut on July 1-2, 2011.

Offering free pancakes and maple syrup outside West Hall, Canadian Embassy volunteers explained to visitors the importance of maple syrup in Canada’s cultural fabric.

It has taken half a century, but archaeologists in Cambodia have finally completed the renovation of an ancient Angkor temple described as the world's largest three dimensional puzzle.

The restoration of the 11th-century Baphuon ruin is the result of decades of painstaking work, hampered by tropical rains and civil war, to take apart hundreds of thousands of sandstone blocks and piece them back together again.

Tens of thousands of yoga fans are expected in Berlin this weekend for a huge festival organized in the German capital's 1930s Olympic Stadium by one of India's best-known gurus, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

The July 2-3 World Culture Festival is billed as a "unique celebration of harmony in diversity", bringing together a hoped-for 70,000 participants from 151 countries.

A historic train service from downtown Singapore to Malaysia faces its final run Thursday as part of a multibillion-dollar territorial settlement between the two neighbors.

The last train to Kuala Lumpur from Tanjong Pagar station in Singapore's port district is set to leave before Malaysia formally cedes ownership of the facility at midnight (1600 GMT), with railway buffs and tourists on board to mark the journey.

Vienna's museum quarter (MQ) has become a highlight of the city's cultural scene in the 10 years since its creation, recording 3.8 million visitors last year, its director said Wednesday.

"Originally, we expected one million people (per year), this is four times as many," Daniela Enzi rejoiced at a press conference ahead of the MQ's 10th anniversary on Friday.

Rima Singh, an executive with an Indian outsourcing company, smokes, drinks and dates boyfriends in New Delhi --- but doesn't tell her parents back home in small-town India.

Three years ago, the 24-year-old left what she described as a mundane life full of strict social conventions in the town of Mathura in northern India and headed for the bright lights of New Delhi.

Survivors and descendants of Jews killed during the Iasi pogrom in Romania on Tuesday attended ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of one of the worst single Holocaust massacres.

"We are here today next to the Iasi Synagogue, the oldest in Romania. We are inaugurating an obelisk which is a monument to remember the thousands of Jews slaughtered here at the end of June 1941", the president of the Iasi Jewish community, Abraham Ghiltan, said.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation on Monday launched a new book that distills his wisdom into 2,000 quotes on everything from prison life to reconciliation to his grief over the ravages of AIDS.

The foundation said the project was born from the thousands of requests received every year from people and organizations across the globe seeking to verify statements attributed to Mandela, both celebrated and obscure.