Lying face down in deep snow, naked, in bone chilling sub-zero weather is enough to make anyone think twice.

But such are the extremes required to penetrate the mysteries of the "pirts" - Latvia's little-known and complex interpretation of what is known in other parts of the world as the sauna, banya, hammam, Roman bath or Native American sweat lodge.

For the first time since she moved from Britain to France 18 years ago, Frances Bucquet is seriously considering taking French citizenship -- and she blames British Prime Minister David Cameron.

English teacher Bucquet is angry at the premier's announcement his government would hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union if it wins the next elections.

Just like the centuries-old coffee tradition, the nargileh, or water pipe, is a mainstay of Turkish culture but authorities are clamping down on this ancient social ritual that health experts say is as harmful to health as smoking regular cigarettes.

Fans of the water pipe, also known as a hookah or shisha, can no longer get their fix in cafes, bars, and restaurants after a law banning smoking from closed public spaces came into force in January.

Christie's auction house said Thursday it will put 125 works of art by the American pop icon Andy Warhol under the hammer in an online-only sale starting next week.

The auction, which will start Tuesday and run through March 25, will be the first time that Warhol's art is sold strictly online, Christie's said Thursday.

The din of machinery mingled with the echo of the 19th century Crimean War when an excavator bucket stumbled upon the yellowed remains of long-dead French soldiers at a construction site in a southern Ukrainian port city.

The haunting find at Sebastopol's Cane Bay beach in December revealed the site of a large cemetery of French soldiers who died in the war against the Russian Empire during the 1854-1856 Crimean War.

Indonesia's cardinal, one of the 117 expected to elect a new pope, will not go to Rome for the vote due to ailing health, he said in an interview with a Catholic magazine.

Cardinal Julius Riyadi Darmaatmadja, 78, said his eyesight was failing and that he would not be able to handle reading the "texts, materials, rules, and so on" necessary for the event.

Villagers in central China who secretly rebuilt tombs after they were flattened by officials to provide more farmland are being forced to pull them down again, domestic media reported Thursday.

Authorities caused uproar last year in Henan province by demolishing two million tombs, and residents re-erected hundreds of thousands of them over the Lunar New Year holiday that ended last week, the Southern Metropolis Daily said.

In this era of Photoshop software and Instagram filters, should people recoil at the notion of photo manipulation?

Not at all, said the curator of a landmark exhibition on the topic that opened in Washington this week. After all, we've been living with altered images since photography was invented in the 19th century.

China's Internet users cried foul Thursday over the trial of an elderly man for an alleged murder decades ago during the political and social upheaval of the Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong.

China has never publicly estimated how many died in the decade-long period, during which people turned on their neighbors. Half a million died in 1967 alone, according to British historian Roderick MacFarquhar.

A Swedish artist who received death threats after depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a dog said Wednesday he would display new paintings of the prophet at an exhibition in the immigrant-heavy city of Malmoe later this year.

"It's important to continue because if you yield to the threats and back away, you have abandoned the democratic principle," Lars Vilks said.