The museum acquired the work in 1965 and says it is worth about $1.5 million.

The gum stuck to the painting's lower left corner and did not adhere to the fiber of the canvas, officials told the Detroit Free Press. But it left a chemical residue about the size of a quarter, said Becky Hart, assistant curator of contemporary art.

"I get the sense that people no longer respect the dead. It's disturbing," a funeral director told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

At one ceremony several people gathered round the coffin and took out their phones to photograph the corpse as preparations were made to begin a cremation, she was quoted as saying.

"I'm sure the deceased would never want their faces photographed," she said.

But others called it a form of a memento in the modern age.

"Some can't grasp 'reality' unless they take a photo and share it with others ... It comes from a desire to keep a strong bond with the deceased," social commentator Toru Takeda told the paper.

She revealed: "People will think I'm a neo-Nazi or a cancer victim or a lesbian. But I'm not at all."

Six gay penguins at a German zoo are still refusing to mate with females of the species flown in from Sweden in 2005, the zoo said.

The problem was that the female Humboldt penguins have proven too shy in their advances, the director of the zoo in the northern port city of Bremerhaven said.

"The Swedes will not make the first move," Heike Kueck said.

The females were flown in last year in a bid to bring the males to mate and help save the Humboldt species from extinction.

Kueck said last year she was optimistic the initiative would be successful because zoo keepers had noticed that at one point a female penguin had managed to cause a couple of males to "separate".

The zoo has 10 male penguins of which six have shown strong signs of preferring male company and formed couples among themselves.

The initiative to "turn" the penguins and make them mate had prompted a furious response from gay rights groups.

In a statement posted on its Internet website, the zoo on Wednesday sought to defend itself from fresh criticism.

"We will be delighted if the penguins form even one heterosexual couple and manage to produce first an egg, and then a little one," it said.

"But of course we accept the male couples that have formed and we are not trying to enforce heterosexuality, as we were accused of doing last year."

No contest: Keira Knightley is queen of the Sparkly Brown-eyed Beauties.

Elegant, yes. But Memoirs of a Geisha actress Ziyi Zhang also looks lemon chiffon-o-rrific.

Since the '50s, Belgian-born actress Audrey Hepburn has set the bar for timeless elegance.

p.s. Mary-Kate Olsen does her best Gollum impression before racing off to puke up hors d'oeuvres.

Click to enlarge photo

Actress Natalie Portman was so nervous at the Oscars when she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress she wet herself.

The Star Wars star was shocked when her portrayal of a stripper in Closer was shortlisted for an Academy Award, but had no idea she'd be so petrified as the nominees were read out on the big night.

She explains, "I think I peed myself a little bit. I kept thinking, I don't want to go up, I don't want to have to stand there onstage.

"Either you're going to have to talk in front of a gajillion people or you can just sit there."

Portman lost to Cate Blanchett and admits she was relieved she didn't have to tremble through her Oscar speech.

She adds, "The not winning part was a comfort. Maybe one day I'll get to a point where I'll enjoy hearing my name called."