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Study: Blacks, Whites in U.S. Shunning Diverse Areas

Relatively few black or white families are relocating to an otherwise growing number of diverse neighborhoods in the United States, according to a study published Thursday.

Writing in this month's American Sociological Review, a team of sociologists examined the "mobility patterns" of black and white families that moved house between 1977 and 2005 within their own metropolitan areas.

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Vatican Newspaper Launches Women's Section

The Vatican's official newspaper is for the first time in its more than 150-year history printing a special supplement for women, the publication said Wednesday.

The four-page color supplement, which will appear in Italian every last Thursday of the month in the L'Osservatore Romano, aims to promote better understanding of the "under-appreciated treasure" of women in the Church, the paper's director Giovanni Maria Vian told reporters.

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Hungarian WWII Leader Fuels New Fears of Nationalism

The renaming of a small town square after Hungary's wartime leader and Adolf Hitler ally is stirring emotions, with critics denouncing it as evidence of the country's drift to the far right.

Fifty-five years after his death, Miklos Horthy will once again have a park in his name when part of leafy Freedom Square in Gyomro, some 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of Budapest, is renamed on Friday.

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Police: Antique Bowl Stolen From Hong Kong Fair

An antique bowl worth HK$1.35 million ($174,000) has been stolen from an international antiques fair in Hong Kong, police said Thursday.

An unidentified foreign exhibitor alerted police on Wednesday as the three-day International Antiques Fair at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre wrapped up.

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Campaign against Attempts to ‘Islamize’ Bible

Fears are arising that missionary groups are seeking to “Islamize” the Bible by altering references to God as “Father” and to Jesus as the “Son” when translating the holy book into languages in Muslim-dominated parts of the globe.

The issue has been raised by Biblical Missiology in the U.S., after translations by the missionary groups Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Frontiers removed or modified terms that may be offensive to Muslims.

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Vandals Damage Ancient Mosaic at Israel Synagogue

Vandals have badly damaged a rare 1,600-year-old mosaic in the northern Israeli city of Tiberias that formed the floor of an ancient synagogue, smashing parts to rubble and scrawling graffiti, antiquity officials say.

Experts suspect extremist Jews who object, sometimes violently, to excavations they claim involve ancient grave sites. There was no claim of responsibility. Police are investigating.

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Rare Pink Diamond Fetches $17m in Hong Kong

The "Martian Pink" diamond fetched $17.4 million at auction in Hong Kong this week as it went on sale for the first time in 36 years, more than double the estimated price.

Billed as the largest pink diamond ever to come up for auction, the stunning gem was the highlight of a Christies' jewellery auction that raised $80 million on Tuesday, the auction house said.

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Cleric Arrested for Sentencing People to Death over Dancing

Police in Pakistan on Tuesday arrested a Muslim cleric accused of sentencing six people to death for singing and dancing at a wedding in the north of the country.

"Police have arrested a cleric and his companion for issuing the death decree, but they totally denied it," local administration official Aqal Badshah Khattak told Agence France Presse.

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Forty Ancient Sites Discovered in Iraq

Teams of Iraqi archaeologists have discovered 40 ancient sites in the country's south from the Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian periods, an Iraqi antiquities official said on Monday.

"Teams, which have been working since 2010, were able to discover 40 archaeological sites belonging to the Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian periods," Amer al-Zaidi, the head of the antiquities inspectorate in Dhi Qar province told Agence France Presse.

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Photo Exhibition Displays Memories of Bullet-Scarred Maogadishu

Funky dancing in a seaside bar, Vespa scooters on elegant, broad boulevards: the faded images of a lost Somalia and its ancient capital are at odds with a place now better known for famine and war.

Those who dare to visit contemporary Mogadishu, often dubbed the world's most dangerous capital, catch only a glimpse of its vanished beauty in the bullet-scarred wasteland devastated by more than two decades of civil war.

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