Villagers from the southern Indian ancestral home of U.S. vice-president hopeful Kamala Harris prayed Tuesday for her victory in an election on the other side of the globe as polls opened.

It doesn't have the malls of Dubai or the mega-projects of Abu Dhabi, but the conservative Gulf emirate of Sharjah has carved out a role for itself as a cultural capital.

The Vatican has sought to tamp down discord over Pope Francis' backing last month for same-sex civil unions, reiterating that he did not question the Catholic dogma of marriage being between a man and a woman.

Several French Muslim leaders on Monday condemned calls for boycotts of French goods in Muslim countries as "unjustified" and accused those leading the charge of "using Islam for political gain".

Veteran British journalist Robert Fisk, one of the best-known Middle East correspondents who spent his career reporting from the troubled region and won accolades for challenging mainstream narratives has died after a short illness, his employer said Monday. He was 74.

Fisk, whose reporting often sparked controversy, died Sunday at a hospital in Dublin, shortly after he was taken there after falling ill at his home in the Irish capital. The London Independent, where he had worked since 1989, described him as the most celebrated journalist of his era.

Under the autumn Iraqi sun, Abbas Abbud expertly scrambles up the ragged trunk of the palm tree. His mission? Picking the juicy dates overhead, and keeping this ancient profession alive.

A Brussels district has suspended a teacher who showed a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed while discussing the murder of a French teacher who had used the same image, its spokesman said Friday.

Tens of thousands of Muslims, from Pakistan to Lebanon to the Palestinian territories, poured out of prayer services to join anti-France protests on Friday, as the French president's vow to protect the right to caricature the Prophet Muhammad continues to roil the Muslim world.

Demonstrations in Pakistan's capital Islamabad turned violent as some 2,000 people who tried to march toward the French Embassy were pushed back by police firing tear gas and beating protesters with batons. Crowds of Islamist activists hanged an effigy of French President Emmanuel Macron from a highway overpass after pounding it furiously with their shoes. Several demonstrators were wounded in clashes with police as authorities pushed to evict activists from the red zone, a security area that houses Pakistan's diplomatic missions. As night fell, demonstrators staged a sit-in on a main road some three kilometers away to protest authorities' use of force.

Pope Francis prayed for the victims of an attack by a knifeman in a Nice church Thursday, as the Vatican said "terrorism and violence can never be accepted."

French President Emmanuel Macron's defense of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed sparked widespread protests, but in Tunisia, it triggered debate balancing hard-won rights of the revolution with respect of religion.