Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko says a new law cracking down on gay rights activism will be enforced during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

Mutko's statement on Thursday follows assurances from the International Olympic Committee that neither athletes nor visitors to the games would be subject to discrimination under the law.

The man who runs Germany's biggest opera house says a chance encounter with an American colleague brought home to him just how fortunate he is.

Nikolaus Bachler, intendant of the Bavarian State Opera, recalled staying at a hotel in Verona, Italy, and finding that the head of a U.S. opera company was also a guest there.

Georgia on Tuesday said a statue of Joseph Stalin would be put up outside the museum commemorating the Soviet dictator in his hometown of Gori, three years after it was torn down from its plinth in the town center.

A spokeswoman for Georgia's culture ministry said that Gori town council had taken the decision to resurrect the controversial bronze statue, which was dismantled under cover of darkness in 2010.

Romania recovered gold coins and silver jewels dating back to the first century BC that were stolen from the site of Sarmizegetusa Regia, the capital of the ancient Dacian people, the national history museum said Tuesday.

"The recovery of five coins and 14 pieces of jewelry is the crowning of more than two years of efforts made by prosecutors, policemen and by Romanian and German experts," the museum said in a statement.

As it trundles down busy roads, the minibus packed with tourists would be unremarkable except for two things -- its passengers are Westerners and the city they are in is Baghdad.

Iraq is no stranger to tourism, with countless pilgrims visiting its religious shrines, but now the country that touts itself as the "cradle of civilization" also wants a different kind of visitor.

An original manuscript of a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe has sold for $300,000 at an auction in Massachusetts.

The Standard Times of New Bedford reports that the handwritten poem with Poe's signature was purchased Saturday in Marion, about 50 miles south of Boston, by a collector who was given 10 days to verify its authenticity.

British police said Tuesday they have recovered a rare Stradivarius violin worth £1.2 million ($1.8 million, 1.4 million euros) that was stolen from its owner in a London railway cafe in 2010.

Thieves took the antique instrument, which was made in 1696, and two valuable bows from Korean-born violinist Min-Jin Kym as she ate at London's Euston station.

Hundreds of Buddhists in Nepal's capital are holding demonstrations near the government's main office to protest authorities stopping them from building a shrine in the jungles of western part of the Himalayan nation.

The protesters, some of them monks, blocked streets around the central secretariat during rush hour, preventing government workers from reaching their offices.

Riots broke out over a full-face Islamic veil. A woman may have lost her unborn baby in another confrontation over her face covering. Tensions flared over a supermarket chain's ad for the end-of-day feast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

France's enforcement of its prized secularism is inscribed in law, most recently in a ban on wearing full-face veils in public. Meant to ensure that all faiths live in harmony, the policy instead may be fueling a rising tide of Islamophobia and driving a wedge between some Muslims and the rest of the population.

Pope Francis celebrated Sunday mass with three million pilgrims jammed onto a Brazilian beach, wrapping up a landmark trip to reignite the Catholic faith in a festive atmosphere with young believers.

Latin America's first pontiff was given a rock star's welcome on Rio de Janeiro's legendary Copacabana beach, with a sea of faithful waving flags, dancing and chanting "long live the pope!" on the crescent-shaped shoreline.