Offer Roberto Ceretti a fortune for one of his coveted hand-made guitars and he'll likely turn you down: the Italian craftsman may be in demand among collectors, but only plies his trade for top musicians in need.

Tucked away in the hills of north-west Italy, Ceretti's workshop is hung with half-finished models, the walls lined with stacks of cedar, mahogany and apple wood, and a large drawing board is littered with classical guitar designs.

After years of flying to North Korea with "bags full of money" and returning with hundreds of works of art, investor Frans Broersen believes he has pre-emptively secured a lucrative slice of a market so specialized it doesn't really exist.

Some critics describe Broersen's strategy as more akin to carpetbagging than collecting, and dispute the overall quality of the works he purchased during the course of seven trips to Pyongyang beginning in 2005.

As the tour group made its way through the narrow alleys of the seaside city of Tripoli, marveling at its medieval architecture, residents stared back at a sight that for them was just as exotic — visitors in their poor, restive corner of Lebanon.

"Foreigners!" residents called out to each other as the group of around 30 Lebanese and foreign tourists made their way through the Old City's labyrinth of cobblestone alleys, snapping pictures of centuries-old archways and graceful minarets. "We put you on our heads!" coffee seller Abu Mohammed, 65, said, using a traditional Arabic greeting for honored guests.

An art installation showing high heels on Islamic prayer rugs was pulled from an exhibition near Paris after a Muslim group complained the work could provoke "uncontrollable" reactions, the artist said Tuesday. 

"Silence", which has already been shown in Paris, Berlin, New York and Madrid, was supposed to go on display in Clichy La Garenne, which is just north of the capital, in a woman-themed art show.

Written on cigarette packs or scraps of newspaper, embroidered with a fishbone on shreds of cloth or scratched on birch bark, clandestine letters from the Soviet Gulag were composed by any means prisoners had.

Now those desperate calls from people banished to the oblivion of Soviet-era labour camps are being given full voice in a Moscow exhibition showcasing letters from the Gulag.

Pope Francis has met a Spanish transsexual and his fiancée at the Vatican, opening his doors to a man dubbed "the devil's daughter" by a local priest, media reports said Tuesday.

Diego Neria Lejarraga met the pontiff on Saturday after writing to him in December to complain he was being treated as an outcast in his parish in Plasencia in western Spain, according to the Spanish daily Hoy.

Britain is to build a new Holocaust memorial in central London to which the government will contribute £50 million (67 million euros, $75 million), ministers said Tuesday. 

The memorial will be built along with an education center in a bid to ensure that the lessons of World War II's mass killing of Jews by the Nazis are never forgotten.

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday slammed what he called attempts to rewrite history and lauded the Red Army at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Putin is conspicuously staying away from the main events in Poland, his absence highlighting ever-deepening divisions with the West over the war in Ukraine.

Turkey will host a ceremony to commemorate Holocaust victims in its capital for the first time in a sign of solidarity with the Jewish community, an official said. 

"The ceremony will take place in Ankara for the first time, with the presence of parliament speaker," the official told Agence France Presse.

A new report says that poverty is on the rise in Venezuela and efforts across Latin America to boost incomes are stalling.

The report by the United Nations' regional economic office in Chile says that in Venezuela poverty rose from 25 percent in 2012, to 32 percent in 2013.