Next time you're at the Taj Mahal, find yourself standing on a precarious cliff or see an approaching train, maybe just enjoy the moment rather than trying to capture the perfect selfie.

The row over the discovery of a "lost" Vincent Van Gogh notebook took a dramatic new turn Thursday, with experts who back the find demanding a public debate with the Van Gogh Museum, which has dismissed it as a fake.

The Jewish birthrate has drawn level with that of Arabs in Israel for the first time since the state was founded in 1948, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics says.

A Claude Monet painting, "Meule," part of his famous grainstack series, sold at auction in New York Wednesday for 81.4 million dollars, a record for the French master, Christie's said.

Iraqi forces have retaken the ancient city of Nimrud, but it has been heavily damaged by the Islamic State group, an AFP journalist who visited the site on Tuesday said.

They were threatened, forced to spit on a crucifix or convert to Islam, but a handful of Iraqi Christians miraculously survived more than two years under Islamic State group rule.

Two white men in South Africa have been charged with assault after an online video emerged showing them pushing a black man into a coffin and threatening to burn him alive, a court official said Tuesday.

Switzerland will return to Egypt an ancient stela stolen from a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis, Geneva's public prosecutor said on Monday.

The number of divorces in Italy surged by more than half last year after the enactment of legislation making it easier and quicker to end failed marriages.

For more than 30 years, sharia courts enforcing Islamic law have been operating quietly across Britain. But two official inquiries have put them in the spotlight amid accusations that they discriminate against women.