The Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris will host its first mass on Saturday, exactly two months after the devastating blaze that shocked France and the world.

For safety reasons, the mass led by Archbishop of Paris Michel Aupetit will be celebrated on a very small scale. Worshippers will be expected to don hard hats but priests will be wearing their ceremonial garb.

At a burial site high in the Pamir Mountains, music from an ancient harp and the smell of burning cannabis and juniper incense fill the air, part of an elaborate ceremony to commune with the divine -- and the dead.

Austria's foreign ministry said Wednesday that it would implement a vote by MPs calling for the closure of a controversial Saudi-funded centre for religious dialogue in the capital Vienna.

Since its sale for a record $450 million, the whereabouts of the "Salvator Mundi," said to be painted by Leonardo da Vinci, has become one of the art world's greatest mysteries.

It was four years ago when Jacky Chen embarked upon a challenge after quitting his job as an electronics engineer: riding his bicycle across the world.

No longer at the food fringes, plant-based meats are selling well in supermarkets and emerging as a hot commodity for fast food chains, industrial food companies and Wall Street investors.

"Big wave incoming, use your legs!" shouts Gabriella Lazzari, as her laughing students try out their new gondoleering skills in the sunshine of Venice's lagoon.

Construction of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia may have started 137 years ago, but the emblematic basilica only got a building permit... on Friday.

Greece's leftist government on Friday said an official mosque in Athens, over a decade in the making, would open by September to satisfy a longstanding demand by tens of thousands of Muslims in the capital.

Just 10 years before he was crowned the world's best sommelier after winning a rigorous global competition against dozens of elite beverage connoisseurs, Marc Almert thought wine "stank."