Liberia's main public university said on Wednesday all 25,000 applicants for the new academic year had failed its entrance exam, prompting the president to describe poor education standards in the impoverished nation as a "national emergency".

The University of Liberia, which educates more than half of the country's students in the capital Monrovia, said it had been forced to admit 1,600 failed candidates for the new term which begins next month.

In the half century since Martin Luther King's march on Washington came to symbolize the Civil Rights struggle, black literature has found its place at the heart of American culture.

Before the era of King's march, which was marked on Wednesday when huge crowds returned to the scene of his speech on the National Mall, books by African Americans were little known and rarely studied or celebrated.

A rights commissioner in Indonesia Thursday joined the chorus of opposition to hosting the Miss World contest, saying the country should protect youth from being "poisoned" by foreign influences.

The UK-based organizers of the beauty pageant have faced opposition from Islamic hardline groups and clerics in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation, even after they agreed to scrap bikinis in the beachwear round and use traditional sarongs.

An "ideal city" inspired by Renaissance humanism off the beaten track in the Tuscan hills is finding new fans with 15th century urban planning that still appeals to today's city dwellers.

"It looks idyllic!" said a tourist from Melbourne in Australia as she admired the harmonious mix of palazzi, churches and immaculately-kept homes of Pienza, a town of 2,000 people in the Italian region of Tuscany.

The Chinese town where the Dalai Lama was born is undergoing huge redevelopment, and behind a mountain the exiled spiritual leader's family home has received a makeover of its own, with a three-meter wall and security cameras installed.

The building in Hongai village, at the summit of a towering peak, is the only place in China dedicated to the man Beijing considers a violent separatist and a "wolf in monk's robes".

Facing a squished budget, the town hosting Spain's annual tomato-throwing festival, La Tomatina, on Wednesday is charging a fee for the first time.

Some 20,000 people from across the world -- mostly Australians, Japanese and Britons -- will pack the eastern town of Bunol, many wearing goggles to protect their eyes from the stinging juice, before launching into a gigantic one-hour food fight.

India's monument to love, the Taj Mahal, was once even more romantic, cloaked behind towering foliage and only shyly revealing its contours as the visitor approached -- until a British viceroy removed the mystery.

Lord Curzon, an enthusiastic gardener and Britain's viceroy to India from 1899 to 1905, "imposed an imperial stamp" on what has become the nation's most famous monument, says U.S. historian Eugenia Herbert.

No car, no sex.

That's the rule for an experiment Zurich is launching Monday to make prostitution less of a public nuisance and safer for women.

The founder of a dating service promoting adultery is setting his sights on China's cheating hearts after a controversial launch in Hong Kong.

"It is a reality of life, we are an unfaithful society," said Noel Biderman, the founder of the Ashley Madison "married dating" service.

A bridge that torpedoed Dresden's World Heritage status because UNESCO deemed it a blot on the city's baroque landscape will open to traffic on Monday.

The Waldschloesschenbruecke, which at 635 metres (2,083 feet) becomes the longest span over the River Elbe, was built to alleviate traffic in the eastern German city's historic centre.