The Jerusalem municipality is planning to compile a DNA database for dogs in the Holy City in a bid to combat the problem of dog poo by tracing droppings back to the offending pooch.

In a statement, the municipality said it would first be collecting saliva samples from dogs in the city before inputting them into a citywide database.

A Saudi city known for its ultra-conservatism has created its own version of the "Arabs Got Talent" television reality show, but with no music and women banned from taking part.

Instead, competitors will be permitted to perform religious chants, recite poems and engage in sports events.

Does the sea hold the secret to truly great wines? To find out a trio of French wine lovers -- a vineyard manager, a barrel maker and an oyster farmer -- teamed up to test the myth, above and below water.

"I had heard a bunch of stories about wines ageing at sea," Bruno Lemoine, who runs the cellars of Chateau Larrivet Haut-Brion in the southwest Bordeaux region, explained as he unveiled their findings this week in Paris.

Trees as far as the eye can see are the weapons one Iraqi province is using in the fight against desertification in a country where decades of conflict have exacted a terrible environmental toll.

Karbala, 110 kilometers (70 miles) south of Baghdad, is best known as the site of the shrines of Imam Hussein and Abbas, who are among the most revered figures in Shiite Islam, and sees millions of pilgrims visit every year.

The oldest known woman in Europe, French national Marie-Therese Bardet, died Friday days after celebrating her 114th birthday, her retirement home in the western village of Pontchateau said.

Bardet, whose birthday was June 2, was the sixth oldest person in the world, according to the U.S. -based Gerontology Research Group (GRG), which compiles birth certificates of people aged over 110 years.

A 200-year-old bottle of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne found on the bottom of the Baltic fetched 15,000 euros ($18,600) on Friday in Finland, less than half what sale organizers had hoped.

"We are quite happy about the money raised although we expected a new world record," Rainer Juslin, an Aaland provincial government official, told Agence France Presse.

Could some really great cupcakes be enough to send Americans back to the Moon?

More than a dozen U.S. universities are hosting events on Saturday to urge support for the cash-strapped space agency, which faces major cuts to its planetary programs in fiscal year 2013.

Sightseers flocking to see a tsunami-wrecked dock washed up on a U.S. beach were urged Friday to reflect on the "tragedy" of last year's killer quake and tidal wave in Japan.

Local authorities in Oregon, where the 66-foot (20-meter) floating dock made landfall Tuesday after a 5,500 mile, 15-month trip across the Pacific, said they had not yet decided how to dispose of it.

A man assigned the old phone number of a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer charged with murder for shooting dead an unarmed black teenager is seeking compensation, after a rash of threatening calls.

Junior Alexander Guy, 49, got his first cell phone last month. Immediately he was besieged by callers angry at George Zimmerman. "You murderer!" "You deserve to die!"

An Algerian man has died after setting himself ablaze in protest when a policeman took away his driver's license in the Mascara region, the El Watan Week-end newspaper reported Friday.

The 36-year-old victim, named only by his initials A.A., had third-degree burns when he was admitted Wednesday to hospital in the city of Oran, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) west of Algiers. He died the following day.