An Indonesian court Tuesday jailed the mastermind of an Islamic extremist plot to bomb the Myanmar embassy for seven-and-a-half years, but the militant pledged to "continue fighting the enemies of Islam".
The sun has not yet come up, but hundreds of people -- cloaked in white shrouds and chanting biblical hymns -- are already gathered at the holy baths in northern Ethiopia to celebrate Timkat.
Poland's Catholic Church on Thursday unveiled a painting kept hidden because of its controversial depiction of Jews murdering Christian children, saying it wanted to foster interfaith dialogue.
The Central African Republic began the search for a peacemaker president Tuesday after months of sectarian violence that displaced a fifth of the population.
The self-proclaimed mastermind of the September 11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has released a manifesto claiming that the Koran forbids the use of violence to spread Islam.
Hundreds of thousands of barefoot devotees poured into Manila Thursday for one of the world's biggest Catholic parades honouring an ebony statue of Jesus Christ they believe has miraculous powers.
President Francois Hollande has backed attempts to ban controversial French comedian Dieudonne as a furore intensified over his sketches that have been widely condemned as anti-Semitic.
A decades-old library owned by a Greek Orthodox priest in north Lebanon's majority Sunni city of Tripoli was torched late Friday, a day after a sectarian scuffle, a security source said.
Stuttering peace talks to end Thailand's bloody southern rebellion are under threat from political turmoil in Bangkok, observers say, as the conflict enters its second decade with no end in sight.
Islamic police in Indonesia's sharia stronghold seized thousands of firecrackers and cardboard trumpets after the city administration banned New Year's Eve celebrations for the first time, an official said Tuesday.
Tens of thousands of Roman Catholics joined in an open-air mass in central Madrid on Sunday to celebrate the Holy Family, just days after the Spanish government agreed to tighten the abortion law.
French footballer Nicolas Anelka on Sunday strongly defended a controversial gesture he made during a weekend match, saying "I am neither anti-Semite nor racist", even as British football authorities mulled possible punishment.
US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed concern Thursday over Egypt's intensified crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood after the military-installed government declared it a terrorist group.
The world's tiny but hugely successful Zoroastrian community will confront a demographic crisis which threatens its very existence when it gathers en masse in its spiritual home of Mumbai this week.
Egypt's premier on Tuesday declared the Muslim Brotherhood movement a "terrorist" group, after a car bomb ripped through a police building and killed at least 14 people.
French President Francois Hollande said he expected Poland to announce Friday that it would provide military backing for France's troops in the Central African Republic.
