This year's Hajj is a landmark: the first full pilgrimage after a daunting three-year period when the COVID-19 pandemic sharply reduced the scale of one of Islam's holiest and most beloved rites.

Millions of Muslims from around the world will start converging next week on Mecca in Saudi Arabia to begin the several days of rituals at holy sites in and around the city. For pilgrims, it is the ultimate spiritual moment of their lives, a chance to seek God's forgiveness for their sins and walk in the footsteps of revered prophets like Muhammad and Abraham.

Pope Francis is expected to be released from the hospital "in the coming days," as he recovers well and without complications from abdominal surgery last week, the Vatican said Wednesday.

In his daily medical update, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis again rested well overnight, was at work during the day and had received the Eucharist during a moment of prayer in the chapel of his hospital suite.

The Indigenous adolescents danced in a circle under the thatched-roof hut from nearly dawn to dusk while parents looked on from the perimeter. Some of the adults smoked tobacco mixed with the wood from a local tree in Brazil's Amazon rainforest.

The seemingly endless loop of the procession, taking place over six long days this month, was leaving some Tembé Tenehara youngsters with swollen and bandaged feet. They were receiving little to eat and spending each night sleeping in hammocks slung in the hut. But in the Alto Rio Guama territory, it is all part of a vital rite of passage known as "Wyra'whaw."

Cyprus bested 15 other countries as the most suitable to host the American University of Beirut's first overseas campus, the president of the world-renowned institution said.

It's part of the university's expansion plan that was initiated in 2018 but was expedited following the catastrophic Beirut port explosion in August 2020.

A Vatican court has convicted two environmental activists of aggravated damage and ordered them to pay more than 28,000 euros (US$30,000) in restitution after they glued their hands to the base of an ancient statue in the Vatican Museums in a protest to draw attention to climate change.

The two members of the Last Generation environmental activist group, Guido Viero and Ester Goffi, also received a nine-month suspended sentence and were fined 1,620 euros apiece. A third activist on trial with them, Laura Zorzini, was fined 120 euros.

Under the plaintive painted eyes of the holy, a volunteer team of two United Nations-backed engineers watched as a whirling laser took a million measurements a second inside Kyiv's All Saints Church.

The laser swept quickly across the church, part of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, while taking a series of incredibly high-resolution photographs.

Matthias Weniger put on a pair of white cloth gloves and carefully lifted a tarnished silver candleholder, looking for a yellowed sticker on the bottom of it.

The candlestick is one of 111 silver objects at the Bavarian National Museum that the Nazis stole from Jews during the Third Reich in 1939. That's when they ordered all German Jews to bring their personal silver objects to pawn shops across the Reich — one of many laws created to humiliate, punish and exclude Jews.

Sticking to doctors' advice, Pope Francis on Sunday skipped his customary weekly public blessing as he convalesces from abdominal surgery in a Rome hospital, but walked a few steps, followed Mass on TV and did some work, the Vatican said.

Francis also ate lunch in his 10th-floor hospital apartment with doctors, nurses, other medical staff and members of his security detail, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a written statement.

Pope Francis was "progressively improving" and sitting in an armchair working Friday, following surgery to remove intestinal scar tissue and repair a hernia in his abdominal wall, the Vatican said.

After a restful night, Francis had breakfast and read the newspapers from his armchair, spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement. He quoted doctors as saying Francis' condition was "progressively improving and the post-operative course is smooth."

Tens of thousands of people on Thursday marched in Tel Aviv's Pride parade — an annual celebration that turns the city's seaside promenade into a boisterous festival of rainbow flags, pounding music and colorful costumes.

It was the first time that Tel Aviv has held the parade since Israel's new far-right government, which is stacked with openly anti-LGBTQ+ members, took office.