When Abdus Sattar built his house in Mahasthangarh village in northern Bangladesh, he used materials that once laid the foundations of one of the world's oldest and greatest cities.

"I just shoveled into the ground, got these bricks and used them in my new house," Sattar, 38, said. "All three rooms of the house were made of the old bricks we found here within the village boundary."

As the battle for Aleppo closes in on the historical center in northern Syria, heritage sites in one of the world's oldest cities are being damaged and experts fear the worst is yet to come.

In Bab al-Nasr neighborhood, a Free Syrian Army rebel pointed to a gaping hole in the base of the delicately chiseled minaret of the 700-year-old Mahmandar mosque.

A barber in rural Pakistan was left fighting for his life after being horrifically mutilated over a relationship with a married woman from an influential local family, police said Thursday.

Officers said Yousaf Khan, 32, was kidnapped by seven members of a landowning family who gouged his eyes out with a knife before cutting off his ears, nose, lips and tongue.

Part of an early 19th-century wall near a panoramic terrace overlooking an ancient square in Rome has collapsed.

No one was injured when about 9 meters of the Pincio wall fell over above Piazza del Popolo before dawn on Wednesday. Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno inspected the damage and promised the wall would be repaired in two weeks.

A member of the U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden has written a firsthand account of the operation, triggering more questions about the possible public release of classified information involving the historic assault of the terror leader's compound in Pakistan.

U.S. military officials say they do not believe the book has been read or cleared by the Defense Department, which reviews publications by military members to make sure that no classified material is revealed.

India has threatened to take action against micro-blogging website Twitter over content alleged to have inflamed ethnic tensions against migrants from the northeast, reports said Thursday.

Internet posts, phone text messages and fake video clips are blamed for spreading rumors that Muslims would attack students and workers from India's northeastern region living in Bangalore and other southern cities.

Islamist extremists occupying northern Mali on Wednesday banned all music except the singing of Koranic verses on private radio stations, in line with sharia, the strict Islamic law they are enforcing.

Whether Madonna, Rihanna or Youssou Ndour, all non-Muslim lyrics have been declared Satanic.

“Nehna wel Amar wel Jiran” is a free, outdoor festival, open to any and everybody, organized by Collectif Kahraba. The festival offers theater, dance, puppetry, storytelling and music taking the form of a guided tour. In 2011, it gathered about 30 artists and more than 1000 spectators from all walks of life, announced Collectif Kahraba in a statement on Wednesday.

And since then, our neighbors keep asking: “Is the party soon?”

An excited friend of a Kuwaiti bridegroom killed him during his wedding with a stray bullet as he charged his gun to fire into the air in celebration, a local daily reported Wednesday.

The man who turned himself in after the incident "fired a bullet by mistake when he was charging his gun," al-Qabas daily said, adding that the bullet hit the groom and killed him.

China's rural inequality is nearing "danger" levels as hundreds of millions of people shun farming for better paid city work, causing a widening wealth gap, a report said.

The state-linked Centre for Chinese Rural Studies said inequality within rural areas was growing given the difference in incomes between those who farmed and those who flocked to cities as migrant workers.