Hundreds of patients at Argentina's biggest mental hospital are turning fine arts training into real ability as painters, actors and musicians, are getting a fuller sense of self along the way.

"Art really can be a tool for change in society. And you can see its effects, because art can heal people," said Mirtha Otazua, a psychologist and coordinator of an acting workshop at Jose Tiburcio Borda Mental Hospital.

Baghdad was once the capital of an empire and the center of the Islamic world, but at 1,250 years old, the Iraqi city is a far cry from its past glories after being ravaged by years of war and sanctions.

Construction of the city on the bank of the Tigris River began in July 762 AD under Abbasid Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansur, and it has since played a pivotal role in Arab and Islamic civilizations.

Three independent Egyptian newspapers ran white boxes on Thursday in the space where their editorials are usually found in protest at what they say is a bid by the Muslim Brotherhood to control the media.

"The space is white to protest against attempts by the Brotherhood to impose its control over the press and media belonging to the Egyptian people," wrote al-Watan which, along with al-Masry al-Youm and al-Tahrir, did not publish editorials.

The discovery of more than 1,200 photographs of former prisoners at a notorious Khmer Rouge torture jail has raised hopes that more Cambodians could learn their relatives' fate, researchers said Thursday.

The collection of passport-sized images contains previously unseen portraits of inmates held at S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia (DC-CAM), which researches atrocities committed by the hardline communist regime in the late 1970s.

Today the Mouraria, a maze of narrow alleys, cobblestone squares and decrepit buildings strung with washing at the heart of Lisbon, is known more for drugs and prostitution than as a tourist stop.

But the neighborhood, one of the capital's oldest, is also where Portugal's melancholy national song style, the fado, was born in the 19th century -- a bit of history that locals want to tap in a district long neglected by city hall where even Lisbonites rarely venture.

Brazil on Friday marks the centennial of the birth of Jorge Amado, its most acclaimed modern writer, whose ribald tales of urban life in his native Bahia state have been translated into 49 languages.

The author, who died 11 years ago, left behind an extensive body of works that celebrate life's sensual pleasures and explore the theme of racial mixing in Bahia, a northeastern state with a large Afro-Brazilian population.

The global Muslim communities of 1.6 billion people agrees on the core principles of their faith, but differ widely in religiosity and religious tolerance, according to a poll published Thursday.

"Muslims are unified by core beliefs and in core practices" like faith in a single God, believe in the Prophet Mohammed and fasting during Ramadan, but "there are differences, sometimes widely" in religious interpretation, James Bell, the principal author of the new Pew Research Center study, told Agence France Presse.

Mexican archeologists found the remains of 2.500 year-old chocolate on a Mayan plate during research in Yucatan, NBC reported last week.

Traces of chemical substances considered "markers" for chocolate were found on fragments of plates uncovered at the Paso del Macho archaeological site in Yucatan in 2001.

For the past 30 years, Israeli Judaic scholar Menachem Cohen has been on a mission of biblical proportions: Correcting all known textual errors in Jewish scripture to produce a truly definitive edition of the Old Testament.

His edits, focusing primarily on grammatical blemishes and an intricate set of biblical symbols, mark the first major overhaul of the Hebrew Bible in nearly 500 years.

The sight of a bearded man in a turban can provoke violent anti-Muslim hatred in America -- and never mind whether the man under the turban is actually Muslim.

For Sikhs, who wear turbans and beards as core attributes of their religion, the mix of Islamophobia and ignorance spells danger.