More than two dozen wrought-iron steps from the original spiral structure, from between the second and third floors of the Paris landmark, were sold to a Middle East collector for 169,000 euros ($190,000) after a bidding-war in the French capital.

Auction house Artcurial originally estimated the sale price to be between 40,000 and 60,000 euros.

The stairs, which stand 4.3 metres high (13 foot) and were part of a private Canadian collection, date from 1889 when the legendary French engineer Gustave Eiffel built the 324-metre edifice as the centrepiece of the Paris Universal Exhibition.

It soon became the most iconic feature on the Paris skyline and is France’s most visited monument despite suffering calls for its demolition in the years after the exhibition.

It is still the country’s third tallest structure, and was the highest building in the world for 41 years until the construction of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930.

The stairs were removed from the tower in 1983 to make way for a lift and cut into 24 sections, ranging from two to nine metres high.

Several were bought by museums or ended up as historic installations in prestigious sites around the world.

Artcurial sold a separate section of the tower — just 14 steps — for 523,800 euros to an Asian buyer in 2016.

Users of the app can report groups practicing unrecognised faiths or unorthodox interpretations of Indonesia’s six officially recognised religions, including Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism.

“Smart Pakem”, which was launched Sunday and is available for free in the Google Play store, was created by the Jakarta Prosecutor’s Office, which said it would help educate the public and modernise the current reporting process.

The app will also list religious edicts and blacklisted organisations and will allow users to file complaints instantaneously, instead going through the often cumbersome process of submitting a written accusation to a government office.

“The objective…is to provide easier access to information about the spread of beliefs in Indonesia, to educate the public and to prevent them from following doctrines from an individual or a group that are not in line with the regulations,” Nirwan Nawawi, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told AFP in a statement.

However, rights groups fear the application could be misused by increasingly powerful hardline Islamic groups and widen divisions in a country where harassment of religious and other minorities is not uncommon.

“This is going from bad to worse — another dangerous step to discriminate religious minorities in Indonesia,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono.

Bonar Tigor Naipospos, vice chairman of rights group Setara Institute, added: “This is dangerous because if mainstream society doesn’t like (a group) they’ll report them through the application — this will create problems.”

Hundreds of thousands of people across the sprawling Southeast Asian archipelago who adhere to non-recognised animist and mystical faiths have long suffered discrimination and limited access to public services.

This year an angry mob rampaged through a small community of the Ahmadiyya Islamic minority on the island of Lombok, destroying homes and forcing dozens of members to flee.

The religious sect has been declared heretical by the Indonesian Ulema Counci(MUI).

Indonesia, a 17,000 island archipelago nation, is often touted for its diversity and religious tolerance, but it has a wide-ranging blasphemy law that has sparked a backlash.

Criticising religion — particularly Islam, which is followed by nearly 90 percent of Indonesia’s 260 million citizens — can land offenders in jail.

This summer, an ethnic Chinese Buddhist was jailed for insulting Islam after asking her neighbourhood mosque to lower its sound system during the daily call to prayer because she found it too loud. Her jailing was widely criticised.

Yogvedant Poddar, 21, was removed from the Jet Airways flight after a passenger spotted him typing “Terrorist on flight, I destroy women’s hearts” into his phone.

The caption accompanied a photo he had taken of himself which showed half of his face covered with a handkerchief, Kolkata deputy police commissioner Avvaru Ravindranath told AFP.

Irish national Benjamin Plackett was sitting behind Poddar on the Monday Kolkata to Mumbai service flight and alerted the cabin crew as the plane was being prepared for take-off.

Poddar was taken off the flight and detained for almost ten hours before being let go without charge, Ravindranath said.

“We questioned him extensively. We found no terror link. It was a message that was meant exclusively for his friends and was not intended to threaten or hurt anyone,” said the police official.

Jet Airways said in a statement that a passenger had been “deplaned for security reasons”.

“The aircraft departed for its destination with a revised flight timing” after the necessary checks had been carried out, the airline added.

In September an Indian passenger on a GoAir flight sparked panic in mid-air when he tried to open a plane door, apparently mistaking it for the toilet.

The same week, a passenger was kicked off an IndiGo service after he tried to access the cockpit to charge his phone while the plane was preparing for take-off.

India’s aviation market is witnessing a massive increase in passenger numbers as its growing middle class take advantage of cheap fares and better connectivity, with many taking to the skies for the first time.

Wildlife rangers and volunteers used pontoons to float the killer pygmy whales — part of a group of 12 found beached in the country’s far north on Sunday — and take them about 400 metres (437 yards) offshore.

“We are hopeful that the six whales that have been refloated will remain at sea,” the Department of Conservation (DOC) department said in a statement, adding that another two whales were euthanised after continually restranding.

Two of the pod were already dead, and two more died after being found by rescuers on the North Island’s west coast, with the remaining eight transported by truck to the east coast on Monday, where sea conditions were calmer.

The survival of even part of the pod was a rare success for DOC as it struggled to deal with four separate strandings in quick succession, including a sperm whale and a pygmy sperm whale in separate incidents on the North Island coast.

By far the largest was when up to 145 pilot whales were found late Saturday washed up on Stewart Island, 30 kilometres (19 miles) off the southern coast of the South Island.

Half the animals were already dead and the rest were put down because there was no chance of rescuing them from the remote location

US travel blogger Liz Carlson was among a group of hikers on Stewart Island that found the whales and she described her frustration at being unable to help the huge sea creatures.

“When we realised the horror of what we were seeing, we dropped everything and ran straight into the water,” she posted on social media.

“Desperately we grabbed their tails and pushed and yelled, before we got hammered by them thrashing around.

“It was useless — they were so big and heavy and the realisation we could do nothing to save them was the worst feeling I’ve ever experienced.”

The reason whales and dolphins strand is not fully understood but factors can include sickness, navigational error, geographical features, the presence of predators, and extreme weather.

The billionaire’s Communist bona fides were revealed by the People’s Daily, the party’s official mouthpiece, in an article praising contributors to China’s development.

He is not the first nor likely the last Chinese super-rich capitalist to join the party, which counts property titan Xu Jiayin and Wanda Group founder Wang Jianlin among its billionaire members.

But Ma’s membership had not been known until now as China’s richest man had previously suggested that he preferred to stay out of politics.

In Monday’s article, the People’s Daily said Ma was a party member who has played an important role in pushing China’s Belt and Road global trade infrastructure initiative — a pet project of President Xi Jinping.

He has also been honoured as one of the “outstanding builders of socialism with Chinese characteristics in Zhejiang Province,” where Alibaba is based, the daily said.

Joining the party can be helpful to private businessmen and women in the country as they navigate a complicated business environment where the state-led economy dominates many industries and private business can be unwelcome.

Xi has renewed a push to expand the Communist Party’s influence in private business, requiring any company with more than three party members to set up a party cell, or lacking numbers, join with nearby firms.

Three in four private companies already host party organisations.

“We must do a good job in the education and management of party members and guide them to play an active role,” Xi told officials in Shanghai earlier this month, noting the increase in private employment and new types of employment.

Xi is pushing to further intertwine the party and business, with the latest rewrite to the rules for party organisations published Sunday by official news agency Xinhua.

In private companies party cells should “guide and supervise the enterprise to strictly abide by national laws and regulations,” the draft order says, according to Xinhua.

Ma did not reveal his Communist Party membership in paperwork filed for Alibaba’s 2014 initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. It is not known if Ma was a member at the time.

A spokeswoman for Alibaba declined to comment.

Ma — who announced in September that he would step down as head of Alibaba next year — has previously indicated he preferred to keep the Chinese state at arm’s length.

“My philosophy is to be in love with the government, but never marry them,” he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2007.

But party members must hold up their right fist and recite an oath upon joining.

“Be loyal to the party, work actively, fight for communism all one’s life, always be prepared to sacrifice everything for the party and people, and never betray the party,” they recite.

General Charles Brown, who heads US Pacific Air Forces, told Pentagon reporters that the break was to help create space for ongoing diplomatic efforts to address North Korea’s nuclear activities.

“As we’re going through the diplomatic aspect, we don’t want to actually do something that’s going to derail the diplomatic negotiations,” Brown said.

“So that’s part of the reason why we’re not doing (flights) over Korea.”

As part of its so-called “Continuous Bomber Presence Mission,” the US Air Force has kept B-1Bs, B-52s and B-2s on the US territory of Guam since 2004.

It routinely conducts flights over the region, often with partners including Japan, South Korea and Australia, as a way of training and exerting a strong military presence against North Korea and other potential adversaries.

Brown said despite not flying over the Korean peninsula, the overall number of bomber flights has not changed.

The US and South Korea have scaled back or scrapped several joint military drills since a historic summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in Singapore in June.

At the meeting, Trump announced the US would stop holding joint exercises with the South, calling them expensive and “very provocative.”

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis last week said the US and South Korea are reducing the scope of “Foal Eagle,” a joint drill scheduled for spring 2019.

Foal Eagle is the biggest of the regular joint exercises held by the allies, and has always infuriated Pyongyang, which condemned it as preparations for invasion.