Surrounded by ochre rubble, Pannakaji beds down on a mattress wedged between Buddha statues at Kathmandu's "Monkey Temple", hoping to deter looters from the quake-ravaged site where his ancestors have served as priests for 1,600 years.

The hilltop Swayambunath Temple complex, one of Nepal's oldest and most sacred religious monuments, was partly reduced to debris by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck on April 25.

Tunisians have unfurled a national flag the size of 19 football pitches in a bid to set a Guinness world record and promote patriotism in the face of Islamist extremism.

Hundreds of people turned out for the event at Ong Jmel in the southern desert on Saturday, an AFP correspondent reported. 

Best-selling British crime writer Ruth Rendell, who wrote over 60 books in a career spanning five decades, died on Saturday at the age of 85, her publisher said.

Rendell suffered a stroke in January and had been in a critical condition in hospital.

Two years after fleeing from her home in Damascus, 22-year-old Rahaf Abdullah is working at a gleaming mall in Iraq's Kurdish region, selling sweets to local women who largely refuse to take such jobs.

While the mall job is a rite of passage for teenagers in America, in Iraq's conservative and relatively well-off Kurdish region the idea of women working — particularly in menial or retail jobs — is frowned upon. That has created opportunities for some of the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and displaced Iraqis who have sought refuge here.

Alcohol has resurfaced as a hot-button issue in Algerian politics, with ultra-conservative Muslims angered by plans to liberalise sales in a country torn between respect for Islam and freedom of choice.

With deeply-conservative Salafists threatening to take to the streets, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal in mid-April blocked a circular issued by Commerce Minister Amara Benyounes liberalising the wholesale trade of alcohol.

Sujan Shrestha says it breaks his heart to look at the piles of rubble that are all that remain of the ancient Nepalese temples where he has worshipped all his life.

The 28-year-old shopkeeper grew up in a house just off Patan Durbar Square, a spectacular World Heritage site in the quake-hit Kathmandu Valley packed with ornately-carved Hindu temples, statues and a royal palace.

Munich opened a museum Thursday on the former site of the Nazi party headquarters, in a long-delayed reckoning with the German city's status as the "home of the movement".

The inauguration coincided with the 70th anniversary of the "liberation" of Munich by U.S. troops at the end of World War II, and of Adolf Hitler's suicide the same day in a Berlin bunker.

A bevy of big-screen luminaries including Luc Besson and Arnold Schwarzenegger descended on Beijing recently for a star-studded international film festival, but art-house directors raised the alarm as authorities block a wave of independent cultural events.

Seeking to raise its "soft power" and standing on the world cultural stage, China is pushing its cinema industry with events such as last week's Beijing International Film Festival (BIFF).

Canberra's National Portrait Gallery has taken down an image of Indonesian President Joko Widodo following the execution of two Australian drug smugglers, saying it feared for the artwork's safety.

Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 34, were shot by firing squad in Indonesia on Wednesday over their role in the so-called "Bali Nine" heroin smuggling ring. 

When North Vietnam's tanks smashed through the gates of Saigon's presidential palace 40 years ago, it heralded the end of nearly two decades of war, a humiliating defeat for the United States and reunification with the South.

Here is a timeline of events in the lead-up to the Vietnam War and the taking of Saigon by Northern forces.