In his cramped workshop in Damascus, Mohammad Abdallah delicately etches away at wooden panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl, a craft he perfected over a decade before the outbreak of Syria's war.

As he works, Abdallah says he fears his craft -- the intricate process of filling carved wooden decorative pieces with shells, bone, or ivory -- could be forced into "extinction" by the conflict raging across his country.

Hundreds of French mosques are participating in a major open-house event this weekend, offering visitors the opportunity to come in for tea and a chat about Islam in a country shaken by jihadist attacks. 

Organised by the country's leading Muslim body, the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), it aims to stimulate dialogue about Islam and create a greater sense of "national cohesion", a year after 17 people were killed in jihadist attacks in Paris targeting satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket. 

Barefoot men and women praying for miracles hurled themselves above huge crowds in the Philippines Saturday to touch a centuries-old icon of Jesus Christ in one of the world's largest Catholic festivals.

Some of the Asian nation's most fervent scenes of devotion played out through the narrow streets of Manila's old quarter as the life-sized Black Nazarene statue was carried through a gauntlet of worshippers.

New copies of Hitler's "Mein Kampf" hit bookstores in Germany Friday for the first time since World War II, unsettling some Jewish community leaders, as the copyright of the anti-Semitic manifesto expires.

Bavaria was handed the copyright of the book in 1945, when the Allies gave it control of the main Nazi publishing house following Hitler's defeat.

A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong has suddenly been demolished, apparently for lacking government approval, state media said Friday, days after images of it went viral.

Images of the statue of a seated Mao towering some 37 meters (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan made worldwide headlines this week.

British school examinations are to be timetabled in order not to disadvantage students from the Muslim minority observing Ramadan, exam boards said Wednesday.

GCSEs, taken by 16-year-olds, and A-Levels, taken by 18-year-olds, in core subjects such as English and mathematics could be set for the beginning of the exam season, before the start of Ramadan, which begins this year in early June.

One year after a jihadist attack wiped out most of its staff, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday published a typically provocative special edition featuring a gun-toting God, sparking protests from the Vatican.

The cover of the anniversary edition features a bloodstained, bearded God-figure in sandals with a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder under the headline: "One year on: the killer is still at large."

French musical giant Pierre Boulez, a prolific composer and conductor who was a keen proponent of contemporary music, has died aged 90, his family said Wednesday.

"For all those who knew him and who appreciated his creative energy, his artistic rigor, his openness and his generosity, his presence will remain alive and intense," the family said in a statement from the Philharmonie de Paris, which Boulez spearheaded.

A landmark deal between South Korea and Japan to end a decades-old feud over wartime sex slaves is struggling to overcome a diminutive but daunting obstacle in the form of the small statue of a teenage girl.

"I am here to defend the peace monument," 22-year-old Jung Woo-Ryung defiantly declared, as she stood guard Tuesday beside the seated bronze figure that was erected on the pavement opposite the Japanese embassy in Seoul in 2011.

A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong has been erected in open countryside by a group of capitalists at a cost of 3 million yuan ($460,000), reports said.

The statue towers some 37 meters (121 feet) over empty fields in the central province of Henan and shows the man who ruled China with an iron grip for nearly three decades seated in thoughtful repose, his hands crossed.