The Islamic State group began bulldozing the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq on Thursday, the government said, in the jihadists' latest attack on the country's historical heritage.

IS "assaulted the historic city of Nimrud and bulldozed it with heavy vehicles," the tourism and antiquities ministry said on an official Facebook page.

Algeria's parliament passed a law on Thursday criminalizing violence against women, in a move criticized by both Islamist lawmakers as well as Amnesty.

The law makes inflicting injury on one's spouse punishable with up to 20 years in prison, and allows a judge to hand down life sentences for domestic violence resulting in death. 

A sculpture of a strutting horse skeleton was unveiled in London's main Trafalgar Square on Thursday -- wearing a London Stock Exchange prices ticker in an allusion to the City's financial power.

Entitled "Gift Horse", the riderless bronze sculpture, by 78-year-old German-US artist Hans Haacke, is in residence on the empty fourth plinth in the British capital's central square.

Elizabeth McCracken, a fiction writer praised for her sharply detailed stories of grief and disaster, has won a $20,000 prize.

McCracken won the Story Prize for her collection "Thunderstruck," award officials announced Thursday night. Her other books include the novel "The Giant's House" and the memoir "An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination."

By putting two Romanian beggars on display in their latest show, Swedish artists meant to raise questions about global inequality but instead find themselves accused of exploiting the poor.

For the street beggars, from Europe's oppressed Roma minority, it was an offer they could not refuse.

New York public schools will add two Muslim holidays to their vacation calendars, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, a promise he made during his election campaign.  

Two of the most sacred holidays in the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, will be observed. 

Egypt's state-sponsored Islamic authority warned women Wednesday against marrying fighters from the Islamic State group online, saying such unions would push them into a "circle of terrorism."

Dar al-Ifta, the body that issues rulings on Islamic sharia law, said it made the warning after noticing several IS calls on social networks for girls to marry its jihadists "through video conferences."

In one of its most complex and ambitious exhibitions, the Museum of Modern Art has designed a career retrospective on Bjork that probes the question -- just how does one put music on a wall?

The New York institution hopes that its approach not only does justice to the wildly experimental Icelandic singer but also provides a model for other museums through its fluid synthesis of various media forms and its priority on making the audience feel connected.

More than 140 ceramics by Pablo Picasso, many rarely seen in public, are the star turn at a month-long festival in Washington celebrating Spanish and Portuguese culture that opened Tuesday.

The Iberian Mix "remix" at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, running through March 24, gives Americans a window on modern and contemporary dance, theater, music, film, food and art from the Iberian peninsula.

They have taken the dubious art of the selfie to a whole new level.

But now -- in what will be a relief to some and derided by others -- Washington's top museums say selfie sticks are banned, in a growing trend among visitor centers in the United States to outlaw the devices.