The furor is the latest in Europe over religious sensitivities -- following cartoons of the prophet first published in a Danish newspaper and recent remarks by Pope Benedict XVI decrying holy war.

Kirsten Harms, director of Berlin's Deutsche Oper, announced "with great regret" that she had decided to cancel the three year old production after state security officials warned it could provoke dangerous reactions in the current politically charged climate.

Somali Christian sources report Ali Mustaf Maka`il, a 22-year-old college student and cloth merchant who converted from Islam to Christianity 11 months ago, was shot and killed in the Manabolyo quarter of Mogadishu.

According to a report from the Barnabas Fund, quoting a Christian source inside Somalia, the gunman was loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts, the Islamist organization that took power in Mogadishu in early June and now controls much of southern Somalia.

The report states the gunman shot Ali in the back Sept. 7 after he refused to join a crowd chanting Quran verses in honor of the lunar eclipse. Solar and lunar eclipses are significant in Islam and are accompanied by special congregational prayers. The Union of Islamic Courts confiscated Ali`s body for 24 hours before delivering it to the grieving family, the report said.

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida in Iraq warned Pope Benedict XVI yesterday that its war against Christianity and the West will go on until Islam takes over the world, and Iran's supreme leader called for more protests over the pontiff's remarks on Islam.

And, as a Vatican official said its ambassadors would seek to better explain the pope's statement, a Turkish man with a fake gun tried to storm a Protestant church in Turkey's capital, Ankara. He was arrested after worshippers trapped him in the church entryway.

Apart from the continuing anger at the pope's speech, in which he cited a medieval passage that called Islam "evil and inhuman," the debate yesterday seemed to turn on whether the pope had actually apologized.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNN) -- Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday said he was "deeply sorry" for the reaction to comments he made last week when he quoted from a 14th-century emperor regarding Muslims.

"These in fact were quotations from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought," the pope said in his regular Sunday blessing, the Angelus.

The pontiff spoke to a rain-soaked crowd at Castel Gandolfo, his summer residence outside Rome, in his first public comments since the controversy erupted last week. (Watch pope apologize as Muslims protest -- 2:02)

The Rev David Hart’s diocese renewed his licence this summer even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda and daily blesses a congregation of Hindus with fire previously offered up to Nagar, the snake god. He also “recites Gayatri Mantram with the same devotion with which he celebrates the Eucharist”, according to The Hindu, India’s national newspaper.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (AP) -- Calling their lives blessed, more than a dozen young women and girls from polygamist families in Utah spoke at a rally Saturday, calling for a change in state laws and the right to live their life and religion.

"Because of our beliefs, many of our people have been incarcerated and had their basic human rights stripped of them, namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," said a 19-year-old identified only as Tyler. "I didn't come here today to ask for your permission to live my beliefs. I shouldn't have to."

Polygamy is banned in the Utah Constitution and is a felony offense. The rally was unusual because those who practice polygamy typically try to live under the radar.

They have been accused by Islamic clerics of preaching Christianity. Afghanistan bans attempts to convert people to non-Islamic faiths.

Around 1,500 South Koreans arrived this week for a "peace festival", and education and entertainment programme.

On Wednesday, hundreds of Afghans held a protest rally against them at a mosque in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The law says a person wishing to convert and the priest conducting the ceremony will have to inform the authorities in advance.

Religious minorities and human right groups have opposed the law saying it seeks to appease radical Hindu groups.

Controversy marked the death of Father Mark Barnes in February, 2005, after his body was mysteriously exhumed amid a controversy between his followers and India's Roman Catholic church, who regarded him as a renegade.

A dispute over whether the 72-year-old priest should have been buried in an official Roman Catholic cemetery or in the grounds of a convent he set up without the Church's authority dragged on in the courts before the Church bowed to his followers' wishes.

She said they took her, then 21, to a drug rehabilitation center for men, where a Muslim teacher counseled her on her conversion and on one occasion, caned her back. After two months, she found an unlocked door out of the compound and escaped.

"What they did was wrong. They shouldn't decide our beliefs for us," said the woman -- who asked not to be named -- of her ordeal in 1999.