Her face covered in mud, 18-year-old Smadar crawls beneath thorny brush, her automatic rifle around her neck.

Pick-up trucks, cowboy boots and a 24-hour booze-fueled party in the Outback: welcome to modern-day dating in Australia's bush, where swiping right is not an option.

Pope Francis on Sunday brought to a close the Catholic Church's "Year of Mercy," shutting the Holy Door at Saint Peter's after a year in which he raised Mother Teresa to sainthood and took in Syrian Muslim refugees.

Pope Francis will create 17 new cardinals from across the globe Saturday in a time-honoured ceremony, elevating them to an elite body that advises and elects popes. 

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.