A women's conference organised by the dominant Islamist bloc in the Egyptian parliament has called for a council for families to replace the existing National Council for Women, a state-owned daily reported on Friday.

The conference, held Thursday on International Women's Day, also condemned the 1978 U.N. convention against gender discrimination saying it was "incompatible with the values of Islamic sharia" law, the Al-Ahram newspaper reported.

The Colosseum in Rome held a special tour to mark Women's Day on Thursday, exploring the famous monument's feminine angle -- from female gladiators to noblewomen in love with the arena fighters.

"From senators' wives to humbler women, many were crazy about gladiators. They were like footballers today," said Lucilla Rossi, a tour guide.

Japan said Friday it was applying to UNESCO to have its cuisine listed as a global cultural treasure as part of a bid to restore global confidence in its food after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Tokyo is to ask the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural arm to register "Washoku: Traditional dietary cultures of the Japanese" as part of the intangible heritage of humanity, the foreign and agriculture ministries said.

Australian officials on Thursday condemned as "disgusting and sickening" the defacing of an Aboriginal burial site with Nazi swastikas and white supremacist slogans.

The Nazi symbol, "KKK" and "white power" were scrawled across the wall and several headstones were vandalised at the Fingal Head cemetery, a burial ground for Aboriginal people between 1864 and 1964 in the north of New South Wales state.

The European Union will fund the last phase of restoring the national library in Sarajevo which became a symbol of the destruction of the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, officials said Wednesday.

The final part of the library's reconstruction, valued at 4.9 million euros ($6.4 million), should be finished by April 2014, Sarajevo mayor Alija Behmen said after signing the accord with EU special representative in Bosnia Peter Sorensen.

Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" has come out in Albania for the first time, printed by a local publisher who now risks possible charges for stirring racial hatred, officials said Wednesday.

Ermir Nika of the culture ministry said Hitler's book would be "judicially treated as it violates Albanian legislation" for inciting racial hatred.

A year after whole neighborhoods full of people were killed by the Japanese tsunami, rumors of ghosts swirl in Ishinomaki as the city struggles to come to terms with the awful tragedy.

One reconstruction project appears stalled because of fears the undead spirits of those who perished last March will bring bad luck.

Ancient Torahs and Bibles have gone on show in the Vatican in an "inter-religious exhibition" aimed at exploring the common heritage of two of the world's main monotheistic religions.

The show "Verbum Domini" ("The Word of God") in St. Peter's Square puts on display for the first time outside the United States the contents of the Green Collection -- the world's biggest archive of ancient biblical texts.

A rich Australian state's plan to pay up to Aus$2,000 (US$2,106) to Aboriginal people whose wages were kept from them for decades has been criticized as a "cruel and heartless offer".

Western Australia, a vast and resource-rich state riding a lucrative mining boom, has announced the payments for the "stolen wages" of Aboriginal people born before 1958 whose wages were controlled by the state government.

Vandals scrawled anti-Arab and anti-Christian slogans in Hebrew on a monastery compound and a school in Jerusalem overnight, Israeli police said on Tuesday.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said unknown people sprayed graffiti reading "death to Christians" and "price tag" on the walls of the compound of the Greek Orthodox Monastery of the Cross in west Jerusalem overnight.