Hundreds of women holding Israeli flags protested on Thursday in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish suburb of Tel Aviv against what they said was rising gender-based segregation, especially on public transport.

The protest in Bnei Brak came after media reports that several bus drivers in recent weeks had forced women to either sit in the back or simply refused to take them on board.

One report earlier this month said the driver of a public bus told a group of teenage girls to sit in the back and cover up after they boarded dressed in tank tops and jeans.

Twin Turkish drone strikes killed seven members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region Thursday, authorities said, as Ankara's foreign minister visited the northern region.

Both strikes hit the mountainous Sidakan subdistrict, north of the regional capital Arbil, where the PKK maintains rear bases in its nearly four-decade-long insurgency against the Turkish military.

"A Turkish army drone struck a PKK vehicle, killing an official and two fighters," the Kurdish counterterrorism services said in a statement on the earlier strike.

By the end of century, more than one billion cows worldwide could suffer from heat stress if global warming continues unabated, threatening their fertility, milk production and lives, according to research published on Thursday.

Nearly eight out of 10 cows across the planet are already experiencing excessively high body temperatures, spiked respiration rates, bowed heads and open-mouthed panting -- all symptoms associated with severe heat stress, the study said.

In tropical climates, 20 percent of cattle endure those symptoms year-round.

Rights activists on Thursday condemned a hardline Christian group's assault on a bar hosting a drag show in a Beirut nightlife district as the result of escalating anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.

On Wednesday evening, more than a dozen people from the "Soldiers of God" group converged on the drag show venue in the capital's Mar Mikhael district, witnesses told AFP, requesting anonymity due to security concerns.

As star footballers line up to take Saudi money, it is easy to forget this is a phenomenon that stretches back decades. Only now, the stakes are much, much higher.

Read about a Brazilian player being greeted by thousands of fans and whisked off in a Rolls-Royce to banquet with royalty, and Neymar springs to mind.

But this describes the arrival of Rivelino, who signed a lucrative contract with Al-Hilal in 1978 -- 45 years before Neymar, his modern-day equivalent, did the same this month.

As Greece was hit by wave after wave of wildfires this week, asylum-seekers found themselves at the receiving end of several allegations they started fires, leading to an anti-migrant frenzy online.

At least two news reports implicating migrants were soon denied.

The verbal assault intensified after a group of 13 Pakistani and Syrian men were accused by locals of being caught red-handed trying to light a fire outside the city of Alexandroupoli, in the Evros region bordering Turkey.

BRICS leaders announced on Thursday the "historic" admission of six new countries, as the bloc seeks to reshape the Western-led global order and expand its influence in an era of strategic competition.

BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- agreed at their annual summit to make Argentina, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates full members from January 1.

"This membership expansion is historic," said Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose nation is the most powerful in the group of large and populous economies.

Three members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) were killed Thursday in a Turkish drone strike in Iraq's Kurdistan region, authorities said, as Ankara's top diplomat visited the northern region.

"A Turkish army drone struck a PKK vehicle, killing an official and two fighters" of the group -- considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey and Western countries -- in the Sidakan district, the Kurdish counter-terrorism services said.

An ex-headmistress who sexually abused two sisters at an Australian Jewish school and spent years fighting extradition from Israel was sentenced to 15 years in jail Thursday.

Handing down the sentence, Melbourne judge Mark Gamble denounced Malka Leifer for abusing her position within the city's ultra-orthodox community and said her "insidious offending" had scarred the sisters for life.

The sentence came after Leifer was found guilty of 18 charges of sexual assault against sisters Dassi Erlich and Elly Sapper, and ends the sisters' decade-long quest for justice.

The vintage beige Mercedes would be eye-catching anywhere in the world, but it is especially so on the streets of impoverished Gaza City.

Munir al-Shandi, 42, is among a handful of vintage car enthusiasts in the Gaza Strip, defying a punishing Israeli siege imposed on the Palestinian coastal enclave to pursue a passionate hobby.

As he drives a 1929 Mercedes-Benz Gazelle, which he restored, through Gaza's cratered roads, young children run after him in excitement, reaching out to touch the car's pristine bodywork.