Students here study math by calculating the benefits of government land takeovers. They practice English by reciting where late President Hugo Chavez was born and learn civics by explaining why the elderly should give him thanks.

Pro-administration messages scattered through the pages of Venezuela's textbooks have become yet another point of conflict in this hyper-polarized country, where Chavez's socialist party won a bare majority in the presidential elections of 2013.

Oil-rich Brunei has banned public celebrations of Christmas for fear of Muslims being led astray, its religious affairs ministry said Thursday, in a country that last year controversially instituted tough Islamic sharia penalties.

The ban, instituted after Christmas last month when local children and adults were seen wearing clothes "that resemble Santa Claus", raises fresh concerns of religious restrictions after last April's announcement of the introduction of a penal code that will eventually include penalties such as the severing of limbs and death by stoning.

A series of sensational claims, including that ancient Hindu sages were the pioneers of aviation and algebra, have triggered a furious debate in Indian academic circles amid warnings that nationalist breast-beating could undermine the country's burgeoning scientific reputation.

A weekend conclave of experts and researchers, whose guests included new Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was intended to highlight some of the latest achievements by India's scientific community.

British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie paid tribute to the work of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo following a deadly attack on its offices Wednesday, saying religion must be subject to satire.

Rushdie was forced into hiding after Iran issued a death sentence on him for allegedly insulting Islam with his 1988 book "The Satanic Verses."

Chinese censors should pay more attention to public opinion, a state-run newspaper argued Wednesday, after an online backlash over the removal of all cleavage from a TV show about China's only female emperor.

"Empress of China", about the Tang dynasty ruler Wu Zetian, who came to power at the end of the 7th century, was abruptly taken off the air soon after its debut on satellite station Hunan TV late last month, ostensibly for "technical reasons".

It dates back to 1795, and has been dubbed the oldest time capsule in America. On Tuesday, a museum in Boston re-opened the relic, last seen over a century and a half ago.

The Museum of Fine Arts in the northeastern city opened the time capsule at a press conference at 6pm (2300 GMT).

Chinese Nobel laureate Mo Yan has heaped praise on the ruling Communist party and its leader Xi Jinping in an interview likely to renew debate about his political stance.

Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel literature prize in 2012 for his novels which sometimes contain grotesque satire of recent Chinese history, but he has been derided by liberals as a government stooge.

A new book imagining a future France coming under Islamic rule hits French bookshops on Wednesday in a literary sweep likely to fuel creeping European angst about Muslim immigration.

The novel, "Soumission" ("Submission"), is guaranteed to become an instant bestseller because of its author: Michel Houellebecq, a star French writer who has found worldwide fame with cynical works portraying an imploding society with dry humor and graphic sexuality.

Hundreds of thousands of people crowded the streets of Madrid Monday in a flurry of confetti and soap bubbles to greet the three wise men in one of dozens of Epiphany feast parades held across Spain.

Carriages decorated with palm fronds, glitter and lights paraded from Madrid's Nuevo Ministerios toward the central Plaza de Cibeles square, in the largest of Spain's annual processions which was broadcast live across the country on public television.

The brutal killing of a bull in a popular festival in a town in northern Colombia has sparked indignation and calls for a public debate on traditions involving animal cruelty.

Animal rights activists and even some government officials are demanding legal action after a video appeared in Colombia showing dozens of people in Turbaco chasing the bull and killing it with machetes, rocks, knives and kicks. The killing took place during a "corraleja," or amateur bullfighting event held in some towns in the South American country.