Muslim groups in Australia on Friday criticized the disparity in the police response to two stabbing attacks in Sydney this month, saying it had created a perception of a double standard and further alienated the country's minority Muslim community.

The Australian National Imams Council said an attack at a Bondi Junction shopping center was "quickly deemed a mental health issue" while the stabbing of a Christian bishop at a Sydney church two days later was "classified as a terrorist act almost immediately."

The patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has suspended a priest who participated in services for the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Dmitry Safronov took part in Navalny's funeral as well as presiding at the commemoration on March 26, the 40th day after his death — an important Russian Orthodox tradition.

A portrait of a young woman by Gustav Klimt that was long believed to be lost was sold at an auction in Vienna on Wednesday for 30 million euros ($32 million).

The Austrian modernist artist started work on the "Portrait of Fräulein Lieser" in 1917, the year before he died, and it is one of his last works. Bidding started at 28 million euros, and the sale price was at the lower end of an expected range of 30-50 million euros.

A rapper in Iran who came to fame over his lyrics about the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini and criticizing the Islamic Republic has been sentenced to death, his lawyer and rights activists said Thursday.

Confusion still surrounds the death sentence issued against 33-year-old metal shop worker Toomaj Salehi, as even Iran's state-run IRNA news agency and its judiciary did not formally confirm it. But the news quickly drew international criticism from the United States and United Nations experts, who pointed at it as a sign of Tehran's continuing crackdown against all dissent following years of mass protests in the country.

Jewish Tunisians who organize an annual pilgrimage to one of the world's oldest synagogues are planning a scaled-down event next month, citing concerns about security less than a year after a deadly shooting there shook their community.

Thousands regularly make the journey to Djerba — the North African island where many of Tunisia's remaining 1,500 Jews reside — to celebrate the Jewish holiday Lag B'Omer. But this year, the community has decided to limit them to the 26-century-old El-Ghriba synagogue instead of the island-wide events traditionally held.

Four Germans were caught laying white roses in memory of Adolf Hitler at the house where the Nazi dictator was born in western Austria on the anniversary of his birth, and one gave a Hitler salute as they posed for photos, police said Monday.

Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, in Braunau am Inn. After lengthy wrangling over the future of the house where he was born, work started last year on turning it into a police station — a project meant to make it unattractive as a pilgrimage site for people who glorify Hitler.

Iranian Muslims travelled Monday to Saudi Arabia for umrah, a year-round pilgrimage they had been barred from for almost a decade over a rift between Tehran and Riyadh, Iranian state media said.

"The first group of umrah pilgrims departed Iran for Saudi Arabia through the Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran", official news agency IRNA reported.

Hundreds of Gazans found rare respite at the beach this week from more than six months of traumatizing Israeli bombardments in the Palestinian territory.

After temperatures suddenly soared, children paddled in the sea and their friends played ball games on the sand around Deir el-Balah in the center of the coastal strip -- but the war was never far away.

The father of a boy accused of stabbing two Christian clerics in Australia saw no signs of his son's extremism, a Muslim community leader said on Wednesday as police began arresting suspected rioters who besieged a Sydney church demanding revenge.

The 16-year-old boy spoke in Arabic about the Prophet Muhammad after he stabbed Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and the Rev. Isaac Royel during a church service on Monday night that was being streamed online. Neither cleric sustained life-threatening injuries.

The University of Southern California canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian who has publicly supported Palestinians, citing security concerns, a rare decision that was praised by several pro-Israel groups and lambasted by free speech advocates and the country's largest Muslim civil rights organization.

Andrew T. Guzman, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs for the private university in Los Angeles, said in a statement Monday that debate over the selection of valedictorian Asna Tabassum to give the May 10 commencement speech took on an "alarming tenor." Her speaking would have presented "substantial" security risks for the event, which draws 65,000 people to campus, he said.