A Muslim American congresswoman's remarks deemed anti-Semitic by some colleagues has exposed deep fault lines among Democrats, with the party seeking to contain the damage with passage Thursday of a measure condemning bigotry and hate.

Progress towards gender parity at work has barely budged for the past quarter century, and will only speed up once men take on far more unpaid caregiving tasks, the UN said Thursday, on the eve of International Women's Day.

Global banking giant Goldman Sachs is loosening its tie as it works to stay current with younger employees who favor more casual dress.

Top brass at the investment bank announced a break from Wall Street's notoriously buttoned up and rigid dress, unveiled a new "firm-wide flexible dress code" that essentially directs bankers to use attire that is in line with client expectations. 

One of the largest U.S.-based Jewish advocacy groups on Monday praised the Vatican's "enormously important" decision to open the archives of Pius XII, who was pope during the World War II period.

Two French journalists were sacked Friday for their part in an online bullying scandal that has shaken the country's media, industry sources told AFP.

After eight years of brutal war in Syria, the UNESCO World Heritage-listed city of Aleppo lies in ruins -- but a vast digital archive in Germany aims to keep its memory alive and help rebuild it one day.

The Syrian Heritage Archive Project documents what it can of the millennia-old history of a part of the world that saw some humanity's earliest urban centres and writing systems, but which has become a symbol of the barbarity of war.

Australian Cardinal George Pell, one of Pope Francis' closest advisors, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting two choirboys, becoming the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of child sex crimes.

Pope Francis on Sunday vowed to tackle every single case of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Church, comparing pedophilia to "human sacrifice" in a speech that left victims cold.

Authorities in Colombia carried out a controlled explosion on Friday to demolish the former fortress of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in Medellin.

A crowd of 1,600 people including some families of Escobar victims, watched as just before midday a loud detonation was heard and the eight stories of white concrete crumbled to the ground, leaving behind a cloud of smoke that lingered for several minutes.

Pope Francis opened Thursday a landmark summit at the Vatican on fighting child sex abuse, saying that the world expected "concrete measures" on tackling paedophilia in the Catholic Church.