Buddhists in southeastern Bangladesh cancelled celebrations for their most colorful annual festival in protest at mob attacks against their community last month, religious leaders said on Tuesday.

Buddhist leaders said a boating jamboree known as the Jahajbhasa Utsab and a paper lantern extravaganza had been scrapped Monday in the Cox's Bazaar district where at least 19 temples were torched or ransacked by Muslims in late September.

France's Limousin region is best known for its well-fed cows, pungent cheeses and fine porcelain. But it is also home to a network of luxury craftsmen, from glove- to shoe-makers, now looking to export their skills.

Despite his 30 years of experience, it still takes Bernard three hours to finish sowing a seam, his gnarled hands working the thick leather with a stitching awl and cobbler's thread.

Deep in the wooded hills of Burgundy in central France, an unusual institute is training unusual students: aspiring French imams who hope to minister to the country's large Muslim population.

Early in the morning, some 200 students from across the country stream into the European Institute of Human Sciences de Saint-Leger-de-Fougeret, where they learn to chant the Koran and study Islamic theology and Arabic literature.

Saudi Arabia will build a massive Islamic center complete with a university and a mosque in Afghanistan, an Afghan minister said Monday, describing the project as "grand and unique".

Estimated to cost up to $100 million, the center on a hilltop in central Kabul will house up to 5,000 students, Dayi-Ul Haq Abed, the acting Hajj and religious affairs minister told AFP.

Some traditional Mohawks are treating the naming of the nation's first Native American saint with skepticism and fear that the Roman Catholic Church is using it to shore up its image and marginalize traditional spiritual practices.

They see the story of Kateri Tekakwitha as yet another reminder of colonial atrocities and religious oppression.

Muslim pilgrims completed their final hajj rituals in the Saudi city of Mecca on Monday as the annual pilgrimage came to a close without any major incidents.

The Saudi authorities congratulated the pilgrims, who officially numbered 3.1 million, on a "successful" hajj season, despite a large number having entered holy sites without proper permits.

Muslim pilgrims rushed to complete the final rituals of the annual hajj on Sunday as they thronged the devil-stoning site in Saudi Arabia's Mina valley on the penultimate day of the pilgrimage.

Most pilgrims hurled stones at three pillars representing Satan as they must leave the holy city of Mina before sunset. Others, however, will stay until Monday when they will perform the ritual one last time.

Hans Werner Henze, one of Germany's foremost composers, has died at the age of 86, his publisher Schott Music announced on Saturday.

"With the death of Hans Werner Henze we have lost one of the most versatile, important and influential composers of our time," Schott said in a statement on its website, saying the composer died in Dresden on Saturday.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims from all over the world, grouped by nationality, stoned the devil in Saudi Arabia's Mina valley on Saturday, as the hajj reached its final stages.

Men, women and children from 189 countries, many of whom had saved for years to make the trip, hurled pebbles at three vast stone pillars representing Satan, shouting "Allahu akbar (God is Greatest)."

As economic giant China ploughs ahead with modernization and industrialization, small-scale farmers and producers are creating pockets of resistance by going back to their roots.

"China has made incredible steps forward but we're paying the price in terms of our health and are losing traditional ways of farming and eating," Zhou Jinzhang told Agence France Presse at the world's biggest food fair in Turin in northern Italy.