Pakistan has asked Internet companies to block more than 400,000 pornography websites, officials said Tuesday, as part of a crackdown on what the top court calls "offensive content" in the Muslim-majority nation.

The move follows a Supreme Court order this month to ban online material considered blasphemous or objectionable in socially conservative Pakistan, where pornography is illegal and considered un-Islamic.

Italy's desire to court visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani extended to covering up classical nude sculptures in the museum where he met Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, it emerged on Tuesday.

The two men made speeches in Rome's Capitoline Museum after a Monday signing ceremony which saw Italian companies tie up 17 billion euros ($18 billion) worth of deals with the Islamic Republic.

A team of intrepid walkers and their camels wearily marched towards the Qatari capital Doha on Tuesday, the last leg of a 50-day trek across the world's largest sand desert.

They are on the verge of successfully retracing the historic 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) route taken in 1930 by British civil servant and Arabist Bertram Thomas.

An Egyptian court jailed Tuesday a female writer for three years for insulting Islam after she criticized the slaughter of animals during a major religious festival, a judicial official said.

Fatima Naoot went on trial last year after she wrote "Happy Massacre" on her Facebook page in October 2014 during Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast of sacrifice.

Dressed in Viking warrior outfits and brandishing swords and shields, the men of Britain's remote Shetland Islands were bristling for Tuesday's spectacular festival of fire celebrating their Nordic roots.

Wearing winged helmets and boasting some impressive beards, around a thousand "Guizers" were marching through the streets of Lerwick as the Up-Helly-Aa festival got under way in the Scottish islands' only town.

Thousands gathered in New Delhi amid tight security Tuesday for India's annual Republic Day parade, a pomp-filled spectacle of military might featuring camels and daredevil stuntwomen, with French President Francois Hollande the chief guest.

A contingent of French infantry in India for joint military exercises led the march down the capital's central Rajpath avenue, the first time foreign forces have ever taken part in the parade.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday revealed he has kept his USSR Communist Party membership card, and still has a soft spot for socialist ideals.  

"I didn't throw out my party card, I didn't burn it," said Putin, a former KGB agent in East Germany, at a meeting with supporters, quoted by Interfax news agency. "My card is lying round somewhere."

Pope Francis will visit Sweden in October to mark next year's 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation in Europe, the Vatican said Monday.

The Argentinian pontiff, a champion of inter-faith dialogue, will attend an ecumenical commemoration ceremony jointly organized by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) in Lund on October 31.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will open Monday the exhibition "The Art of the Holocaust", featuring works created by concentration camp prisoners, as the German leader pledged to combat the threat of rising anti-Semitism.

The show brings together 100 works on loan from Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial by 50 artists created in secret between 1939 and 1945 while they were confined to the camps or ghettos.

Eight employees of Cairo's Egyptian Museum will face a disciplinary hearing over a botched repair of the golden mask of King Tutankhamun, officials said on Sunday.

The 3,300-year-old funerary mask of the boy pharaoh was damaged when its beard was knocked off in August 2014 as museum staff removed it from its display case to repair the lighting.