An Austrian mayor demanded on Friday that Turkish residents "immediately" stop displaying national flags in windows and on balconies, saying foreign politics had no place in his city.

A sad-eyed Pikachu Pokemon Go character sits amidst the rubble on a Syrian street, while a Charizard dragon from the smash hit game is perched alongside gun-toting jihadists.

Israeli police said they had detected a new plot against Jerusalem's Gay Pride march to be held Thursday, a year after an ultra-Orthodox Jew killed a teenager and stabbed five other people.

Romanian legend Radu Beligan, who held the Guinness record as the world's oldest theater actor, died on Wednesday aged 97 in a hospital in the capital Bucharest, medical staff said.

Saudi Arabia's top clerical body has revived a 2001 religious edict prohibiting Pokemon in response to public calls for guidance on the newly launched smartphone version of the game.

Hardline Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday summoned the head of the army radio station for "clarifications" over a program on a Palestinian nationalist poet, the minister's spokesman said.

Egypt announced Tuesday it is nominating former minister and ambassador Moushira Khattab for the post of UNESCO director general.

Gay and transgender Christians will set up a ministry during World Youth Day, when Pope Francis is expected to meet hundreds of thousands of young Catholics in southern Poland later this month.

UNESCO has named Iraqi marshlands once ravaged by dictator Saddam Hussein as a World Heritage Site, a bright spot for a country where jihadists have repeatedly sought to wipe out history.

Taiwanese activists have launched a sarcastic "Say sorry to China" contest on social media after a Chinese filmmaker replaced a local actor for allegedly supporting the island's independence.