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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

An abandoned power plant in Buenos Aires dating back to the early 20th century has been transformed into a cultural center, a key part of plans to revitalize the "poor" south of Argentina's capital.

The old brick factory topped with a giant tower, built by the Italian-Argentine electricity company from 1914 to 1916 by Italian architect Giovanni Chiogna, had been nearly forgotten along the highway to La Plata.

Two villages in the Holy Land's tiny Christian community are teaching Aramaic in an ambitious effort to revive the language that Jesus spoke, centuries after it all but disappeared from the Middle East.

The new focus on the region's dominant language 2,000 years ago comes with a little help from modern technology: an Aramaic-speaking television channel from Sweden, of all places, where a vibrant immigrant community has kept the ancient tongue alive.

Australia will open up to divers the wreck of a Japanese mini submarine that famously attacked Sydney harbor during World War II, after winning support from Tokyo, authorities said Monday.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the event -- which sparked public hysteria in the city -- New South Wales Environment Minister Robyn Parker said controlled diving would be allowed.