Tunisia's resurgent Salafists have succeeded in disrupting a string of cultural events deemed un-Islamic, with artists and opposition media increasingly blaming the Islamist-led government for failing to rein them in.

The hardline Islamists on Wednesday prevented an Iranian group from performing at a Sufi music festival in Kairouan, south of Tunis, saying their Shiite chanting amounted to an attack on sacred Muslim values.

A Malaysian court on Friday charged seven family members, including the parents, over the death of a three-year-old girl who suffocated in a suspected exorcism ritual, media reports said.

Chua Seng Ban and his three-month-pregnant wife Lim She Lee, both aged 35, pleaded not guilty to charges of causing the death of Chua Wan Zuen, aged two years and nine months, at their home in the northern town of Bukit Mertajam.

Graffiti artists are used to escaping cops, jumping from roofs, and dodging trains, but New York painters who turned an abandoned factory into a street art legend now face their real nemesis: gentrification.

5Pointz in the borough of Queens is one of the city's most arresting sights -- a huge building plastered in brilliantly colored, skillfully executed graffiti works that have won international acclaim.

More than 100 beauty queens from around the globe have descended on the northern Chinese mining city of Ordos on the edge of the Gobi desert ahead of the Miss World final this Saturday.

Built on the arid and sparsely populated steppes of Inner Mongolia and around 700 kilometers (440 miles) from the nearest beach, Ordos makes an unlikely setting for the world's biggest beauty pageant.

Radical Islamists obstructed a stand-up comedy performance by Tunisian actor Lotfi Abdelli, the ministry of culture said on Wednesday, accusing those responsible of attacking freedom of expression.

"The attack by people associated with the Salafist movement on the Bayrem Ettounsi cultural center in the town of Menzel Bourguiba" prevented Lotfi's show "100% Halal" from taking place, the ministry said in a statement.

It was the trauma of seeing Israeli troops raze homes in the Bedouin community where she lives that inspired 14-year-old Salha Hamadin to write an award-winning fairy tale.

Earlier this year, Salha, who comes from an impoverished Palestinian Bedouin community near Jerusalem, was crowned winner of the teenage category of the Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tale Bay competition, which saw 1,200 entries from around the world by youngsters aged 11 to 16.

It is a blistering summer day in the West Bank city of Hebron and Mohammed al-Jaabari sweats profusely as he struggles to haul a heavy gas canister through an Israeli checkpoint.

It is not an enviable task on any day and particularly not during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when most Palestinians fast from dawn till dusk, making any physical effort doubly hard.

The Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto sanctuary in Tokyo originally built in 1869 to honor those who gave their lives for Japan.

Around 2.5 million souls are enshrined there, the vast majority of them soldiers who died in Japan's armed conflicts running up to and including World War II.

An Indian yoga guru on Tuesday ended a six-day hunger strike against corruption but vowed to use his public popularity to pile pressure on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Baba Ramdev, a maverick "holy man" who heads a wealthy international yoga organization, sipped juice to break his fast as several thousand supporters cheered him in New Delhi.

The evening turban-tying class in the Sikh-dominated Indian city of Amritsar is packed with pre-teen boys learning a centuries-old tradition -- that religious leaders fear is under threat.

Over the next 90 minutes, the instructors unfurl long strips of cloth in vibrant hues from indigo to burgundy, and proceed to knot, pleat and finally tie them carefully around the boys' heads.