UN Dispatch's John Boonstra passes along a fascinating milestone. The Nigerian film industry (known as Nollywood) has surpassed Hollywood to become the world's second largest after India's Bollywood:

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) survey, Bollywood – as the Mumbai-based film industry is known – produced 1,091 feature-length films in 2006. In comparison, Nigeria’s moviemakers, commonly known as Nollywood, came out with 872 productions – all in video format – while the United States produced 485 major films.

“Film and video production are shining examples of how cultural industries, as vehicles of identity, values and meanings, can open the door to dialogue and understanding between peoples, but also to economic growth and development,” said UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura.

“This new data on film and video production provides yet more proof of the need to rethink the place of culture on the international political agenda,” he added.

  KAMBOU SIA/AFP/Getty Images

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone say they were sent a signed photo of Saddam Hussein, after the the deposed Iraqi dictator was shown their film South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, in jail. The movie depicts him as the boyfriend of Satan:

Stone, 37, said both he and Parker, 39, were most proud of the signed Saddam photo, given to them by the US Army's 4th Infantry Division.

He said: "We're very proud of our signed Saddam picture and what it means. Its one of our biggest highlights.

"I have it on pretty good information from the marines on detail in Iraq that they showed Saddam the movie.

"Over and over again – which is a pretty funny thought.

"That's really adding insult to injury."

No word yet on whether Kim Jong Il has seen Team America.

Ousted Czech prime minister and EU president Mirek Topolanek says his description of Barack Obama's stimulus plan as a "road to hell" was, in typical Czech fashion, inspired by a hard rock show:

"AC/DC played here (in Prague) last week. And their cult song 'Highway to Hell' might have led me in that very improvised speech to use the phrase 'road to hell'," Topolanek was quoted by daily Lidovy Noviny as saying on Friday.

Tom Stoppard would be proud.

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It's been a rough trip to Africa -- at least in the headlines -- for Pope Benedict XVI, but hey, he got some great souvenirs! 

Pygmies from the Baka ethnic group in Cameroon gave Pope Benedict XVI a turtle last week during the Pontiff's visit. As one blogger muses:

No stranger to unusual gifts, Pope Benedict was presented with a tortoise in a basket by a group of Baka Pygmies who gave him an unscheduled send-off from Cameroon last week. I’m not sure whether one can read deep messages into the gift of a tortoise (“It’s a metaphor for Pope Benedict’s approach to the Church, a slow dogged move forward with a heavy protective shell.” “It’s a symbol for…” etc etc etc ad nauseam). At any rate appears that tortoises are quite important to Baka Pygmy culture as a symbol of wisdom—they even have a special dance called the tortoise dance.

Vatican officials at first suggested it might find a nice home in the Vatican gardens. But something must have gone wrong with the turtle that was supposed to bring wisdom. After tagging on to the flight from Cameroon to Angola, the turtle (but let's hope not the wisdom!) was left behind in Luanda.

Father Lombardi told reporters the turtle was "in good hands" with the staff of the nunciature in Angola because it was decided the African turtle should live in an African habitat.

The Indonesian island of Bali has big dreams to become a world capital of spiritual tourism. But that required ignoring the religious edict issued by the country's top Islamic body last week. The Council of Ulemas issued a Fatwa against yoga. Awkward, since Bali had planned to host an international yoga conference.

What ever to do? Not much of a question there, it seems. Yoga! The conference went off as planned, finishing up today, with even the island's governor attending. 

Praise be to tourism, the payoffs from Bali's yoga drive could be big. Wayan Wijayasa of the Denpasar Tourism Academy in Bali told local press that if just one percent of U.S. "yogis" visited Bali a year, it would mean 160,000 yoga tourists in the country. That's big dough if you consider that Americans spent $2.95 billion on yoga equipment presumably last year, according to Wijayasa.

Monetary gains aside, yoga is popular in Bali. So that must be what Hillary Clinton meant when she said, "If you want to know if Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights can coexist, go to Indonesia." That should ceratinly be worth a few sun salutations.

See also, FP's list of the all-time stupidest fatwas.

SONNY TUMBELAKA/AFP/Getty Images

On his China Rises blog, McClatchy's Tim Johnson reports that Chinese authorities have cancelled performances by British band Oasis because of concerns over singer Noel Gallagher's political views. From the band's press release:

"The licensing and immigration process for the two shows had been fully and successfully complied with well before the shows went on sale. The Chinese authorities action in cancelling these shows marks a reversal of their decision regarding the band, which has left both Oasis and the promoters bewildered.

"According to the show's promoters, officials within the Chinese Ministry of Culture only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert on Randall's Island in New York in 1997, and have now deemed that the band are consequently unsuitable to perform to their fans in the Chinese Republic on 3rd and 5th of April, during its 60th anniversary year.

By now, China should've somehow realized that it's gotta lighten up on those artistic censorship laws. Other superpowers' leaders seem perfectly content to just ignore self-righteous outbursts from ageing foreign rock stars.

Dave Hogan/Getty Images

The miniskirt and the hijab (the traditional Islamic headscarf) might be on opposite ends of the women's fashion spectrum, but they've found a common enemy in the government of Uzbekistan which deems both items "alien" to Uzbek culture and hazardous to your health. From RFE/RL's TransMission blog:

Speaking in a 25-minute long, prime-time television program aired this week, Uzbek officials and doctors cited health and security reasons to condemn both the hijab and the miniskirt.

"Some religious extremist women carried guns under their hijab," warned an official from the state religious committee in the television program called "Tahdid" ("Threat"). 

The hijab can also cause oxygen and calcium deficiencies, warned doctors. As for women who wear miniskirts, they were advised to dress with "moderation" to prevent susceptibility to all kinds of infections and other unspecified health problems. 

Tajikistan apparently tried to do something similar in 2007, banning both garments on university campuses. According to TransMission, the hijab ban was more effective than the miniskirt one.

ALI YUSSEF/AFP/Getty Images

That Bishop Richard Williamson, as a representative of the Vatican, openly and ardently denied the Holocaust's occurrence was a problem. A big problem. As a religious leader it was a position that shouldn't be tolerated. His dismissal from the Church was warranted.

Today however, Argentina's interior ministry announced that the bishop had ten days to leave the country or he would face expulsion, saying that Williamson "has concealed the true motive for his stay in the country." He had said he was an employee of a non-governmental group rather than declaring 'his true activity' as the director of a seminary, the ministry stated."

Wait a minute. Has Williamson broken any laws? No charges have been filed against him. However ignorant, however reprehensible his beliefs, he's entitled to them. This latest action against the bishop seems like blatant persecution and it's a horrendous precedent to set that will no doubt arm more dangerous Holocaust deniers with anti-Semitic rhetoric.  

It's certainly not hard to understand the desire to just get rid of Williamson as quickly as possible, but Argentina just gave him a whole new subject to talk about.

Now that he's a wine-sipping watercolorist, you didn't think he would sit around listening to Shostakovich all day, did you? The Moscow Times has the scoop on Vladimir's latest antics:

Putin took a few hours off from dealing with the financial crisis late last month to dance to hits like "Money, Money, Money" performed by the ABBA tribute band Björn Again in a private concert for the prime minister and a group of friends, organizers of the show told The Moscow Times.

"Putin and his colleague friends were all dancing and getting involved with the choreography," Björn Again founder and creator Rod Stephen said in a telephone interview from London.

Putin and the others waved their hands in the air during a rousing rendition of the Swedish group's "Super Trouper" and pointed their fingers during "Mama Mia," Stephen said.

The Jan. 22 show took place in a concert hall at a Kremlin residence near Valdai Lake, in the northwestern Novgorod region, said Stephen, whose band charged ?20,000 ($29,000) for the performance.

A source involved in the concert said it was organized by the Kremlin for Putin but that no state funds were used in arranging the show.

"ABBA is popular, and [Putin] likes them," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

I can understand why the source was worried. We may have just discovered the one area where the Deep Purple- and Pink Floyd-loving Dmitry Medvedev is more of a badass than his prime minister.

Update: It just occurred to me that if known ABBA-lover John McCain had been elected, the two leaders could have used this common interest to move past their differences and usher in a new era of U.S.-Russia cooperation. Oh well. 

The Indian public's reaction to the award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire has gone from indifferent to outright hostile. Rioters in the eastern city of Patna attacked theaters showing the film and tore down posters to protest the use of the word "dog" in the title.

The protests were organized by social activist Tapeshwar Vishwakarma, who has also filed a lawsuit against actor Anil Kapoor (who played the game show host in the film) and Academy Award-nominated composer A.R. Rahman for violating the rights of slum dwellers by depicting them in a bad light. Kapoor and Rahman are both better known to Indian audiences than the film's other stars.

The parents of two of the child actors in the film have also accused producers of underpaying and exploiting their children. 

It remains to be seen how this bad press will dampen some of the near-univeral praise the film has received in the U.S. 

Photo: PAL PILLAI/AFP/Getty Images

On Tuesday, Dan Drezner wondered how Indian audiences might react to the colorful depiction of India's urban poverty in Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire. If Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan is any indication, Slumdog might be in trouble:

"If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations," he bellowed. "It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea, authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a westerner, gets creative global recognition."

On the other hand, the Guardian's Nirpal Dhaliwal says India's movie elite are just rattled because no Bollywood director would have the guts to make a film like Boyle's. Indian audiences will get to make up their own minds on Jan. 23.

The Czech Republic, having only taken over the rotating European Union presidency in January, has already managed to offend its EU peers with a sculpture it installed in the atrium of the European Council headquarters in Brussels. Titled "Entropa," the sculpture makes light of European national stereotypes:

[C]ountries digested depictions of their national character as a Dracula-inspired theme park (Romania), a rudimentary toilet (Bulgaria) or a flooded land with minarets poking through (the Netherlands)...

Other national depictions in ”Entropa” include Luxembourg as a lump of gold on sale to the highest bidder, France emblazoned with the word ”Greve” (”strike”), Denmark made of Lego, and Sweden lying within an Ikea flatpack. Britain is simply missing – supposedly a reference to its deep Euroscepticism.

Worse still, the piece turns out to be an eleaborate prank. It was not the work of artists from all 27 EU member states, as had been claimed, but was created by a single Czech artist, David Cerny. (You probably want to make sure your speakers are turned off if you click on that link at work.) The Czech government has been forced to make a public apology.

Arguably, the Eurocrats should have known what they were getting into. As anyone who's read Kafka or seen a Jan Svankmajer movie can attest, Czech culture has always had a somewhat dark, surrealist edge to it. This is, after all, a country that elected an absurdist playwright as its first post-communist president. I reported on the country's strange obsession with Frank Zappa for Radio Prague in 2004. The documentary, Czech Dream, a feature-length prank in which hundreds of real Prague residents were tricked into attending a fake supermarket opening in an empty field, is another good example.

So while Cerny's sculpture might not be great diplomacy, I like that a bit of classic Czech weirdness has been injected into one of the world's stuffier organizations.

(Hat tip: Passport reader Aaron Lovell)

Update: Cerny responds to the controversy:

Grotesque hyperbole and mystification belongs among the trademarks of Czech culture and creating false identities is one of the strategies of contemporary art.  The images of individual parts of Entropa use artistic techniques often characterised by provocation. The piece thus also lampoons the socially activist art that balances on  the verge between would-be controversial attacks on national character and undisturbing decoration of an official space. We believe that the environment of Brussels is capable of  ironic self-reflection, we believe in the sense of humour of European nations and their representatives.

That belief was clearly mistaken.

Photo: DOMINIQUE FAGET/AFP/Getty Images

In his first week, Steve Walt has already proved himself to be a great and provocative blogger who's not afraid of a little controversy. It's a thrill and an honor to be sharing a site with him.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to let him get away with referring to Dublin born-and-bred U2 as a "UK" band in his post on the lack of great European rock bands. If that's what passes for realism these days, I want no part of it. (He's technically right about Belfast's Van Morrison, though some of my relatives probably feel differently.)

If Walt is defining Ireland as Europe, I'd submit the recently reunited shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine as a great European band. If you think of others, he's looking for suggestions.

A wealthy Bangladeshi filmmaker is spending about $60 million to build an exact replica of India's Taj Mahal 20 miles from Dhaka:

Construction work began five years ago, but Mr Moni says that he came up with the idea in 1980 when he first visited the real Taj in Agra, northern India.

He said that his homage had been built because most people living in Bangladesh - where nearly half of the population exist below the poverty line - cannot afford to travel to India to see the real thing.

“Everyone dreams about seeing the Taj Mahal but very few Bangladeshis can make the trip because it's too expensive for them,” he said.

Indian diplomats are not happy about the plan and are currently "investigating" the matter. Though one admits, “A copy is a form of flattery, I suppose.”

Bangladesh clearly has a taste for monumentally ambitious construction projects. Their stunning Louis Kahn-designed parliament building took two decades to construct and, I would think, would be more a source of pride than an exact copy of India's most famous building.

Photo: Munir UZ-ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images