Russia on Saturday quietly marked 30 years since the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, an enigmatic figure whose era of "stagnation" witnessed repressions and a massive nuclear arms drive.

The burly and chain-smoking World War II veteran served from 1964 until his death in 1982 at a time when Moscow and Washington were churning out weapons of mass destruction and carving up the globe for spheres of influence.

Leading bishops have voiced alarm at a rise in anti-Islamic sentiment in France and admitted that hardening attitudes within the Roman Catholic church are fueling the trend.

In comments that will add to pressure on President Francois Hollande to respond to demands from France's large Muslim community to speak out on the issue, the Bishop of Angouleme, Claude Dagens, said he was profoundly concerned by recent developments.

Italy's parliament has passed a law making it compulsory to teach the national anthem in schools, angering the Northern League federalist party which has long campaigned against national symbols.

"Imposing something is a sign of weakness because it means that it is not felt in the hearts of the people," Northern League boss Roberto Maroni told the party's radio station Radio Padania on Friday after the law passed on Thursday.

The accident-prone British thirty-something Bridget Jones is to return in a third novel next year, her creator Helen Fielding announced on Friday.

Fielding's first two books about Jones, written in the form of diaries chronicling the heroine's failed efforts to find love, lose weight and quit smoking, have sold more than 15 million copies.

A long catastrophic drought led to the collapse of Maya culture, a new study said Thursday, confirming a controversial hypothesis linking its demise to climate change.

The study, published in Friday's issue of the journal "Science," involved an international team of researchers.

Dermot Bolger was commissioned in 1993 by a U.S. museum that holds the original manuscript of James Joyce's famed novel -- which chronicles a day in the life of a Dublin man -- to adapt the book for the stage.

After one performance in the United States, the play was left to languish when EU copyright laws suddenly changed and Bolger gave up hope of persuading the protective Joyce estate to let it be performed.

An erotically charged Picasso oil painting of his mistress alongside tulips and fruit sold Thursday for $41.5 million on an otherwise anemic night for high-end art in New York.

"Nature morte aux tulipes," painted in 1932, was the star of Sotheby's Impressionist and modern art sale in Manhattan. The pre-sale estimate for the work had been between $35 million and $50 million.

The Australian state of New South Wales Friday announced a special inquiry to look into claims the Catholic Church covered up for paedophile priests, silenced investigations and destroyed evidence.

The inquiry, announced by state Premier Barry O'Farrell, will examine the allegations made by a senior police investigator who outlined his charges in a letter published in the Newcastle Herald newspaper.

Few archaeological sites seem as entwined with conflict, ancient and modern, as the city of Karkemish.

The scene of a battle mentioned in the Bible, it lies smack on the border between Turkey and Syria, where civil war rages today. Twenty-first century Turkish sentries occupy an acropolis dating back more than 5,000 years, and the ruins were recently demined. Visible from crumbling, earthen ramparts, a Syrian rebel flag flies in a town that regime forces fled just months ago.

Israeli President Shimon Peres on Thursday opened a major new Jewish museum in Moscow housed in a converted 1920s bus garage which aims to tell the story of Jews in Russia from Tsarist times through the horror of the Holocaust to the present day.

Peres and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov opened the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center which is based around Moscow's stunning Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, designed in 1926 by constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov.