With its catchy beats and in-your-face lyrics, Egypt's hugely popular electro "mahraganat" music has found millions of fans in the conservative country -- but now officials are pulling the plug.
"Never call it mahraganat again," came an edict from Egypt's musicians' union.
"Anyone who writes the word mahraganat on his videos will have his name immediately crossed out," union head and former star crooner Mustafa Kamel said.
Thousands of demonstrators thronged Mali's capital Bamako on Friday to protest the publication of a video on social media deemed blasphemous against Islam.
Six people were held on Thursday accused of complicity in circulating a "blasphemous" video showing a man making "derogatory comments" and "insulting acts" against Muslims, the Koran and the Prophet Mohammed, the Bamako prosecutor's office said.
Police said the protest, called by the High Islamic Council of Mali (HCM), gathered thousands of people, although organisers estimated their numbers at more than one million.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Friday dismissed a pledge from US leader Joe Biden to "free Iran" as the clerical regime faced a new upsurge in seven weeks of protests.
The protests began after the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested by the morality police. In their scale, nationwide spread and anti-regime nature, the demonstrations have become the biggest challenge from the street to the authorities since the 1979 revolution.
Veteran hawk Benjamin Netanyahu launched negotiations Friday with his ultra-Orthodox and far-right allies on forming what could be the most right-wing government in Israel's history, raising concerns at home and abroad.
Netanyahu's Likud party won 32 seats in Israel's 120-seat parliament, the Knesset, according to the latest official results of the election released on Thursday night.
That combined with 18 for two ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and 14 for the rising extreme-right alliance called Religious Zionism gave the right-wing bloc supporting Netanyahu 64 seats.
One of the world's leading Islamic clerics on Friday called for dialogue between the faith's two main currents to settle sectarian differences, in an address to religious leaders including Pope Francis.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar mosque, a centre of Sunni learning, made the rare appeal at the Bahrain Dialogue Forum aimed at promoting religious harmony.
Pope Francis warned in Bahrain on Friday that "opposing blocs" and global divisions have put humanity on a "delicate precipice", a veiled reference to the Ukraine war.
"We are living at a time when humanity, connected as never before, appears much more divided than united," he said during a speech to religious leaders in the Gulf kingdom.
"We continue to find ourselves on the brink of a delicate precipice and we do not want to fall."
Pope Francis warned the world is on the edge of a "delicate precipice" and buffeted by "winds of war" as he held inter-faith talks with one of Sunni Islam's top leaders in Bahrain on Friday.
The 85-year-old Argentine decried the "opposing blocs" of East and West, a veiled reference to the standoff over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in a speech to religious leaders in the tiny Gulf state.
Israel's election this week cemented the rise of the country's extreme right, with firebrand Itamar Ben-Gvir set to gain a powerful position in government.
After leading an energetic campaign centred on security and Jewish identity, Ben-Gvir celebrated as his Religious Zionism alliance achieved third place -- and likely kingmaker status -- in the November 1 vote.
"It's time that we returned to be the masters of our house in our country," he told cheering supporters Wednesday, after exit polls showed the nationalist bloc more than doubling its parliamentary seats.
When a landslide buried part of an Islamic shrine in Iraq this summer, killing eight pilgrims, sorrow quickly turned to anger because the site was run without oversight from state or religious authorities.
The deadly disaster struck in August near Karbala when tonnes of soggy earth and rock collapsed onto the Shiite shrine Qattarat al-Imam Ali, dedicated to the imam's journey on his way to battle in AD 657.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Thursday for Egypt to free political prisoners as leaders prepare to visit for the global climate summit.
Rights groups estimate that some 60,000 political prisoners are behind bars in Egypt, which starting next week will welcome more than 90 world leaders including President Joe Biden for COP27.
In a call with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Blinken discussed climate and said that US-Egypt cooperation "is strengthened by tangible progress on human rights," the State Department said.
