A man in southern Russia faces a potential jail sentence after he was charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers over an Internet exchange in which he wrote that "there is no God."

Viktor Krasnov, 38, who appeared in court Wednesday, is being prosecuted under a controversial 2013 law that was introduced after punk art group Pussy Riots was jailed for a performance in Moscow's main cathedral, his lawyer Andrei Sabinin told AFP.  

One of Germany's leading concert halls has expressed shock after a performance by an Iranian harpsichord virtuoso ended in a tumult with disgruntled concertgoers shouting at him to "speak in German".

"I was shocked and flabbergasted," the head of Cologne's prestigious Philharmonic Hall, Louwrens Langevoort, told AFP via telephone on Wednesday.

They arrived in Europe as child refugees fleeing civil war and are now running one of France's coolest fashion labels.

But the young Georgian brothers behind the hip brand Vetements, whose new collection hits the Paris catwalk Thursday, have still bigger plans -- to revolutionize the way the fashion business works.

Schools across Hungary were half-empty on Monday after parents kept their children at home as part of a growing revolt over the right-wing government's sweeping education reforms.

More than 34,000 people signed up to the protest on the Facebook page "I won't go to school", launched by 36-year-old mother Krisztina Puskas.

New regulations in the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip that women must be accompanied by chaperones for driving lessons with male instructors have stirred a debate in the Palestinian enclave.

Local media were filled Monday with reports on the latest move in Gaza, controlled by the Islamist movement Hamas, to fall in line with Muslim tenets that women in public be accompanied by a husband or male family member.

Iran and Saudi Arabia's rivalry has played out in proxy wars across the region, and escalated further after the two severed diplomatic and trade ties last month. Yet in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, popular Iranian restaurants are outselling feverish calls for a boycott and stand as a reminder of when ties between the two countries held promise.

In the 1990s, inside steaming kitchens in Riyadh, Iranian chefs taught their counterparts how to season and cook Persian dishes for a Saudi-owned Iranian restaurant called Shayah. The food proved so popular that nearly 20 years later, Shayah is a chain with 13 outlets in the kingdom, 11 of them in Riyadh.

Cinemas in the north Indian city of Aligarh were under mounting pressure Sunday to stop screening a movie set in the metropolis that tackles homophobia, following protests from right wing religious groups.

The movie "Aligarh", which opened nationally last week, is based on a true story about a university professor suspended from his post after a television news crew filmed him having sex with a rickshaw puller.

A painting by Camille Pissarro will return to a Jewish family in France whose art collection was looted by the Nazis in 1941, a lawyer who led the negotiations said.

The University of Oklahoma will give back "La bergere rentrant des moutons" -- or "Shepherdess bringing in sheep" -- to Holocaust survivor Leone Meyer, her New York lawyer Pierre Ciric told Agence France Presse about the restitution agreement signed Monday.

Italy's highest court on Wednesday nullified a regional law in Lombardy dubbed "anti-mosque" by critics, easing regulations on the construction of places of worship in the country's north.

The law, drawn up by the anti-immigrant party Northern League and voted in at the start of 2015, tightened rules regarding all religious buildings, but was widely believed to target the wealthy region's Muslim community.

Availability is tight for a $10 Airbnb rental in Chicago designed to look like a Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece.

Openings for the space the Art Institute of Chicago modeled after Van Gogh's famous painting of his bedroom have sold out quickly.