A U.S. government-appointed panel urged Washington Tuesday to step up pressure on Pakistan over religious freedom, warning that risks to its minorities have reached a crisis level.

In an annual report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also raised concerns about what it called a worsening situation in China, as well as problems in Egypt, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia and other nations.

Japan's Mount Fuji will likely be added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites next month after an influential advisory panel to the U.N. cultural body made a recommendation, officials said Wednesday.

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a consultative body to UNESCO, told the Japanese government that the almost perfectly conical Fuji is appropriate for registering as a World Heritage site, the agency for cultural affairs said in a statement.

A U.S. panel criticized Western European countries Tuesday for "aggressive secularism" as it released a report on religious freedom that took aim at laws banning full-face veils in public.

For the first time, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom -- whose members are appointed by the government -- included a chapter on the region in its annual review of tolerance of other faiths around the world.

Vietnam's first gay sitcom has become a YouTube sensation, racking up millions of views as support for legalizing same-sex marriage strengthens within the communist government.

Homosexuality was once seen as a social evil in Vietnam and the success of "My Best Gay Friends", a low-budget series about three people sharing an apartment in southern Ho Chi Minh City, has taken even its creator by surprise.

A majority of Muslims around the world want sharia law to be implemented in their countries but are split on how it should be applied, a Pew Research Center study has found.

A comprehensive study titled "The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society" conducted between 2008 and 2012 focused on 38,000 people in 39 countries and territories drawn from a global Muslim community of 2.2 billion people.

Russia's two greatest art museums were engaged Tuesday in an unsightly public feud over an idea to revive a Moscow museum of Western art that was shut down by Stalin in the late 1940s.

The State Museum of New Western Art gathered the impressionist and early modern art collected by renowned Russian art collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in the late Tsarist era.

Despite significant improvements since the hard-line Taliban ruled Afghanistan, religious freedom remains poor, especially for minorities, and Afghans still can't debate religion or question prevailing Islamic orthodoxies without fear of being punished, a U.S. commission said in a new report on Tuesday.

As the country braces for next year's presidential election and the planned withdrawal of most foreign combat troops by the end of 2014, the panel urges the U.S. government and its allies to work harder to promote religious rights in the war-torn nation.

The China Institute Gallery has been transformed into an ancient cave, taking visitors back more than a millennium to a dazzling world where Buddhist worshipers adorned the walls with colorful frescoes, silk prayer banners and lavishly painted life-size clay sculptures.

"Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road" features a replica of an 8th century cave carved into the limestone cliffs at the edge of the Gobi Desert southeast of the oasis town of Dunhuang from 366 to about 1300.

A Catholic priest in southeastern Brazil was excommunicated on Monday after publicly resigning from his duties to protest against the church's opposition to homosexuality.

"Father Roberto Francisco Daniel can no longer celebrate the divine rite because he has been excommunicated," a statement from the Bauru diocese in Sao Paulo state said.

Shanghai's contemporary art museum on Sunday opened a show featuring the works of American pop artist Andy Warhol, but without his iconic portraits of former Chinese leader Chairman Mao.

The Pittsburgh-based Andy Warhol Museum, which supplied more than 300 pieces for the show, said months in advance that paintings of Mao Zedong would not be shown in keeping with the wishes of the Chinese hosts.