An old rift at the heart of Sunni Islam that once saw clerics brawl outside a mosque in medieval Baghdad has emerged again, only this time they are fighting it out on social media.

Pope Francis made surprise visits to two Rome hospitals on Friday, the Vatican said, continuing his monthly series of unannounced  trips.

Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh was possibly bi-polar or had a borderline personality, but a combination of factors likely drove him to cut off his ear and commit suicide, a researcher said Friday.

Danish-Palestinian bad-boy poet Yahya Hassan, who stormed onto Denmark's literary scene in 2013 and quickly became a household name, was Friday sentenced to jail over a shooting, casting a pall over a short, tumultuous career.

Instead of colorful, handmade caps for sale to Syrians and foreign tourists, Zakaria Mosuli -- the last tailor in Aleppo's battered Old City -- now sews military headwear almost exclusively for soldiers.

Five stolen 17th and 18th-century masterpieces were handed back to the Netherlands on Friday, foreign ministry officials said, and will soon return to a Dutch museum from where they disappeared 11 years ago.

A Pakistani mother-of-three and the man she was allegedly having an affair with were hanged from a tree on Thursday, with police blaming her husband, brother and father for carrying out the killings.

Indonesia is blocking three gay networking apps after linking the popular service Grindr to a pedophile ring, an official said Thursday, accusing them of promoting "sexual deviancy."

The world's oldest man turned 113 on Thursday and the Holocaust survivor living in Israel readied for the Bar Mitzvah he was denied a century ago, his family said.

Amatrice, the Italian town devastated by last month's deadly earthquake, is suing French weekly Charlie Hebdo for defamation over a series of cartoons about the disaster.