Spain's government Friday slashed a tax on sales of works of art as a "first step" to help the cultural industry, which has been howling about the impact of a 21-percent sales tax.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government decided at a ministerial meeting to cut the sales tax for works of art by more than half, to 10 percent.

Two versions of Vincent Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" are going on display side-by-side in London.

One is owned by Britain's National Gallery, the other by Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum, which has loaned its painting to London for an exhibition.

It was a vast boat that saved two of each animal and a handful of humans from a catastrophic flood.

But forget all those images of a long vessel with a pointy bow — the original Noah's Ark, new research suggests, was round.

Centuries-old glass and porcelain pieces were smashed to powder, a priceless wooden prayer niche was destroyed and manuscripts were soaked by water spewing from broken pipes when a car bombing wreaked havoc on Cairo's renowned Islamic Art Museum.

Experts scrambled to try to save thousands of priceless treasures as ceilings crumbled in the 19th-century building, which had just undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation.

Malaysian Christians must obey rules forbidding them from using the word "Allah", the country's leader was quoted saying Friday, breaking his silence in a festering row that has raised fears of religious conflict.

The comments by Prime Minister Najib Razak met with immediate dismay from Christians, who have called the issue an example of growing Islamic intolerance that threatens to tarnish the Muslim-majority country's moderate image.

A court in Pakistan has sentenced a British man to death for blasphemy for claiming to be a prophet of Islam, a prosecutor and police said Friday.

Mohammad Asghar, a British national of Pakistani origin, was arrested in 2010 in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, for writing letters claiming to be a prophet, police said.

Best known as a celebrity restaurateur whose 1960s mission to change Western attitudes to Chinese food has lasted nearly 50 years, Michael Chow is also a trained painter who, until recently, had not picked up his brushes for decades.

Mr Chow restaurants became glamorous centers for Swinging London, New York's disco days and today's Hollywood and art world elite. The man behind them has unveiled his first solo exhibition in Asia, a show he says reflects his complicated relationship with China and the father he last saw when he was 13.

A local council in Northern Ireland on Thursday announced the cancellation of a play based on the Bible following complaints by Christian conservatives that it was blasphemous.

"As the guardians of all that is right in society we have got to take a stand somewhere and that is what happened in this instance," explained Fraser Agnew, the mayor of Newtownabbey, a suburb of north Belfast.

An official Russian human rights report released Thursday lashed out at European Union nations for their "aggressive promotion" of the rights of sexual minorities.

The 150-page report on the state of human rights across the EU criticized the rise of xenophobia, racism, violent nationalism and chauvinism -- notably in eastern nations with Russian minorities -- as well as anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism.

Pope Francis described the Internet on Thursday as "a gift from God" and called on Catholics to "boldly become citizens of the digital world".

"The internet... offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God," the Argentine pontiff said in his first World Communication Day message, given annual by the pope.