In small-town northern India, Muslims are offered food and money to convert to Hinduism. If that doesn't suffice, they say they're threatened. Across the country, the Christmas holiday is canceled for hundreds of government servants who spend the day publicly extolling the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Powerful Hindu nationalist leaders — some with close ties to Modi's government — say they intend to ensure India becomes a completely Hindu nation.

But Modi himself? He has remained silent as nationalist demands have bubbled over into day-to-day politics, and amid growing fears among minority religious groups of creeping efforts to shunt them aside.

Classified documents made public Tuesday shed light on the political courtship between Britain's Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev -- whom she famously declared she could "do business" with.

After Gorbachev's first official visit to Britain in 1984, four months before he became Soviet leader, Thatcher praised his "charm and humour" as both sides sought to improve East-West relations.

Britain was looking for stronger economic ties with China even before the agreement which would eventually hand it Hong Kong was signed in 1984, secret documents released Tuesday showed.

Ahead of late prime minister Margaret Thatcher's trip to Beijing in December that year to sign the deal, officials discussed how she should make the case for British business with China.

The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday that it will not allow screening of Hollywood's Biblical epic "Exodus: Gods and Kings," mirroring similar bans by Egypt and Morocco.

The National Media Council, charged with vetting films for release in the UAE, said the Ridley Scott movie about Moses's escape from pharaonic Egypt contained "religious and historical mistakes."

An Egyptian court Monday banned an annual Jewish pilgrimage in the Nile Delta province of Baheira honoring a Moroccan rabbi, saying it went against local traditions, a judicial official said.

A court in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria issued an indefinite ban on celebrations marking the birthday of Yacoub Abu Hasira, held annually in January since 1979, the year Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty.

A group of Christians gathered in an apartment above a Beijing dental surgery, the atmosphere jubilant as a choir belted out carols on Christmas Eve -- but the curtains stayed tightly closed.

Unofficial Christian groups have long been subject to crackdowns, but the situation appears to be worsening as their numbers increase, and the ruling Communist party takes a more nationalist tone under its leader Xi Jinping.

The Philippines's largest broadcaster pulled souvenir T-shirts for an upcoming papal visit from its stores Monday, after coming under fire from Catholic bishops irked by the words "no religion" emblazoned on them.

Pope Francis, who has been praised for being reform-minded regarding long-contentious issues such as remarriage, divorce and homosexuality, will visit the deeply Catholic country in January.

From early morning, housewives carrying buckets and brass pots queue in the back streets of Nepal's capital for the free water pumped from a network of ancient stone spouts.

A lifeline in a city with erratic government supplies and expensive private alternatives, Kathmandu's intricately carved communal spouts have survived invasions and earthquakes.

Time and Mother Nature are threatening to dismantle the Alamo. Not the original, but the replica 18th-century Spanish mission and Old West movie set John Wayne built for his Oscar-nominated 1960 movie and that for decades was a tourist mecca and film production site.

"It's not just something that represents history to a movie set — it is now history for sure," says Rich Curilla, the one-man curator and custodian of the now-closed Alamo Village.

Egypt has banned the Hollywood biblical epic movie "Exodus: Gods and Kings" citing historical inaccuracies, the culture minister said Friday, a day after a similar move by Morocco.