Surrogacy is forbidden under Islam, a religious authority in Malaysia said Tuesday after reports that the practice is becoming more popular in the Muslim-majority nation.

"If another woman is introduced into the situation, then it means the real mother of the child can be questioned," said Mat Jais Kamos from the Islamic affairs department in Malaysia's biggest state, Selangor.

Early French Renaissance art receives the royal treatment in the first major U.S. exhibit devoted to the period which opened this week at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Frst shown in Paris, the exhibit provides a rare glimpse of the period in which late Gothic exuberance was influenced by the energy and harmony of the Renaissance.

Purushottan H. Sakhare perches on a wall by a Mumbai pavement, slips a sheet of green paper behind the roller of his battered typewriter and winds it into position with two deft flicks of the wrist.

After pulling the carriage release lever towards himself, he punches the worn, black keys, the swift and precise movements of his fingers sending the slender metal type bars slamming into the black ink ribbon.

Papers relating to codebreaker and computer pioneer Alan Turing will go to a British museum after the National Heritage Memorial Fund stepped in to help buy them for the nation.

The government-backed fund said Friday it had donated more than 200,000 pounds ($320,000) to a campaign to stop the notes and scientific papers from going to a private buyer.

Scientists on Thursday announced they have discovered the oldest human remains ever found in sub-Arctic North America, offering a new window into the lives of the continent's earliest inhabitants.

The discovery of the partially-cremated skeletal remains was made at an fire pit within an ancient dwelling at Alaska's Upward Sun River site, according to an article appearing in the February 25 edition of the journal Science.

The Indian government is considering proposals to limit the number of guests allowed at weddings to reduce food wastage, an official told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

Indian weddings are famous for their extravagance and a wave of new money in the country has led to ever more lavish marriage celebrations, often involving multi-cuisine buffets and hundreds, or even thousands, of guests.

Bant Singh, a scarred survivor of class violence in rural India, has an indisputable claim to be a voice for India's impoverished and muted millions.

The folk singer lost both arms and a leg in an attack five years ago after he dared to challenge high-caste landlords in his area of the northwestern state of Punjab who had raped his 17-year-old daughter.

A unique 19th-century building in Switzerland's La Chaux-de-Fonds watchmaking town, a U.N. world heritage site, has burned to the ground, officials said Sunday.

It was not known what caused the fire, which destroyed seven apartments, a daycare and two businesses in the four-storey building, the town said in a statement.

An exhibition of paintings by Soviet artist Alexander Deyneka opened in Rome on Thursday, inaugurating a year packed with hundreds of joint cultural events between Italy and Russia.

The paintings on loan from Russia depict famous scenes from the Russian Revolution and World War II, but also nudes and images of daily life in the Soviet Union with factory workers, sportsmen and children.

Paintings acquired by shadowy anonymous buyers paying record prices now hang in the light of day in Qatar in the world's first museum devoted to modern Arab art.

The masterpieces are displayed among other treasures making a collection of almost 6,500 pieces in Mathaf (museum in Arabic), which has gathered works of Arab modern art masters previously scattered among private collections and national museums.