Radical Islamist gunmen have threatened to use force against university students in Yemen's southern city of Aden if they do not observe segregation of the sexes on campus, witnesses said.

Students said armed militants distributed leaflets containing the threats and signed by the Islamic State group in at least three departments of the university of Aden.

Turkey's appeal court has overturned a 10-month suspended jail sentence for blasphemy against world-renowned pianist Fazil Say over Twitter posts deemed offensive to Islam.

The Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that his comments on social media should be regarded as "freedom of thought and expression and thus should not be punished," the Hurriyet newspaper reported on Monday.

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei will set up collection points to receive Lego block donations, he said Monday, after he set off a social media storm by accusing the Danish company of refusing a bulk order on political grounds.

The children's toy became embroiled in controversy when Ai said its manufacturer had refused to supply him directly as it "cannot approve the use of Legos for political works".

A group of Egyptian and foreign experts launched Sunday a new bid to unravel the "secrets" of the pyramids, including a search for hidden chambers inside four famed pharaonic monuments.

Architects and scientists from Egypt, France, Canada and Japan will use modern infra-red technology and advanced detectors to map two pyramids at Giza and the two Dahshur pyramids, south of Cairo.

On October 15th 2015, World Monuments Fund officially announced 50 sites to join the 2016 World Monuments Watch at their press conference in New York.

Following its nomination by Save Beirut Heritage, the remarkable yet endangered

After a choppy few weeks for Pope Francis, a strongly denied report that he has a brain tumor has sent Vatican and Italian conspiracy theorists into overdrive.

"The timing chosen reveals the manipulative intention of throwing up a cloud of dust," the Vatican's Osservatore Romano claimed in its first edition after another newspaper, Quotidiano Nazionale, published its "scoop" about the pontiff's health.

Gay people caught having sex in Indonesia's staunchly Islamic Aceh province will from Friday be punished by 100 strokes of the cane, an official said, despite criticism of the "inhumane" law.

Under an Islamic bylaw, anal sex between men and "the rubbing of body parts between women for stimulation" is outlawed. The rule applies to all Muslims including foreigners, provincial sharia chief Syahrizal Abbas told Agence France Presse.

A Japanese Buddhist monk on Wednesday finished a grueling nine-day ritual without eating, drinking, or sleeping as he chanted sutras 100,000 times, reports said.

The 41-year-old Kogen Kamahori's endurance test made him a living form of the Buddha according to his temple's beliefs, the Asahi newspaper reported.

The Islamic State group may dominate headlines about the destruction of heritage sites in Syria, but it is far from the only culprit, new U.S. research warned Wednesday.

The Syrian regime, Kurdishand other opposition forces are also major players in the destruction, according to the study led by a specialist in Middle East archaeology at Dartmouth University.

An unholy row has broken out over the restoration of France's medieval landmark, Chartres Cathedral.

State-funded work to return the interior of the towering 13th-century cathedral to its original creamy white hues has sparked a howl of protest from as far away as the U.S.