Selling everything from underwear to dried fruit to teacups, tiny glass-windowed kiosks packed with goods line Moscow's network of long, gloomy pedestrian underpasses.

But now the city's government has replaced the old, haphazardly-built kiosks with new purpose-built units and is trying to turn the underpasses into smarter shopping arcades for busy Muscovites.

Jews can secure eternal salvation without converting to Christianity, senior Catholic theologians say in a report published Thursday in the latest refinement of their stance on a vexed theological issue.

Addressing a question that has long blighted relations between the two faiths, the report also unequivocally states that the Church should not actively seek to convert Jews to Christianity, echoing the stance outlined by former Pope Benedict XVI in a 2011 book.

Turkey will give the prayer houses of its Alevi community a legal status, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Thursday, in the most significant gesture yet made to the country's largest minority faith.

Alevis pray in a "Cemevi", meaning House of Gathering, which is a less formal structure than a mosque and allows men and women to mingle freely.

Muhammad Ali rebuked Donald Trump over his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States, news reports said Wednesday, as the boxing icon became just the latest high-profile name to lay into the presidential hopeful.

Ali, a Muslim, did not mention the Republican frontrunner by name, but a statement by the former heavyweight champ -- reported by NBC and ABC -- appeared directed squarely at Trump.

Welhite Naro proudly proffers his fried spiders and grilled crickets along with a somewhat less exotic dish of millet and squash -- a small sample of the disappearing delicacies of India's remote northeast.

Naro is a farmer from Nagaland, one of the eight states that make up northeast India -- an area connected to the rest of the country by only a narrow sliver of land and with its own distinct cultural and culinary traditions.

An abandoned spiritual retreat in northern India where The Beatles famously learned to meditate has been opened to the public, with plans to turn it into a touristy yoga center.

The ashram, located in the town of Rishikesh on the banks of the holy Ganges River, became derelict after its flamboyant guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi abandoned the place in the 1970s.

Germany, Italy and France called Tuesday for the European Union to crack down on the illegal trade in antiquities used to bankroll attacks by the Islamic State group.

The culture ministers of the three countries wrote in a letter to the European Commission urging concerted measures against the illicit trade in cultural treasures for the benefit of the jihadist group.

Russia on Tuesday began a 60-hour marathon broadcast during which celebrities and members of the public will read aloud the whole of Leo Tolstoy's sprawling novel "War and Peace."

A total of 1,300 readers including actors, politicians and sports figures and ordinary people are taking part in the reading which began at 10 am (0700 GMT).

Guatemalan Catholics gathered across the country Monday as part of a centuries-old tradition to "burn the devil," lighting bonfires in the street to mark the beginning of the holiday season.

The celebration sees Guatemalans set effigies of Satan in flames on the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the unofficial start of the Christmas holiday season.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded Thursday to four civil society groups who led Tunisia's transition to democracy, though the country has now been plunged into a state of emergency as it battles the threat of jihadism.

After a suicide attack on a bus belonging to the president's security entourage that killed 12 people on November 24, authorities enforced a night-time curfew in Tunis, temporarily closed the Libyan border, and announced a state of emergency -- for the second time this year.