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.

Germany's Bavaria state signaled Wednesday it would not seek to prevent the publication of an annotated version of Adolf Hitler's manifesto "Mein Kampf" in an apparent about-face.

Amid a debate over academic freedom and a back and forth over whether to pursue the project, Bavaria indicated that it would not try to stop a historical institute from bringing out a version of the book with scholars' commentary.

France, prized by tourists for its historical treasures, loses at least half a million buried archaeological items to pillagers each year, a group fighting the practice said Wednesday.

Jean-David Desforges, head of the French association Stop the Pillage of Archeological and Historical Heritage, told a conference that many objects from ancient Gaul, and Nazi artifacts from World War II were illegally dug up and sold by thousands of prospectors using metal detectors.

Even as city living booms around the world, the Slow City movement directed by an intrepid Italian is gaining a global following with a back to basics campaign to make small towns the new place to be.

From his hometown of Orvieto -- a hilltop mediaeval gem surrounded by castles and vineyards in central Umbria -- Pier Giorgio Oliveti has helped expand Cittaslow to 28 countries including South Korea, Turkey and the United States.