In Beddawi Camp, North Lebanon, Ghazal walks into her new classroom with a big smile. "It’s bright. We have a nice playground," says the 5th grader. "I’m happy to be here every day."

The 10-year-old’s joy is shared by hundreds of children in the camp benefiting from improved schools, as well as thousands of refugees across Palestine Refugee Camps who now have safer infrastructure and better access to clean water.

Salman Rushdie said Monday he was "pleased" with the maximum 25-year jail sentence handed to a man who tried to kill him with a knife at a New York cultural center in 2022.

"I was pleased that he got the maximum available, and hopefully he uses it to reflect upon his deeds," Rushdie told BBC radio in an interview.

Ash dangled precariously from Iosif Skordis' cigarette as he reminisced with fellow villagers in a language on the edge of extinction, one that partly traces its roots to the language Jesus Christ once spoke.

The 97-year-old Skordis is one of only 900 people in the world who speak Cypriot Maronite Arabic, or Sanna. Today, his village of Kormakitis is the last bastion of a language once spoken by tens of thousands of people across dozens of villages.

Harvard University is challenging the Trump administration's decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for defying the White House's political demands.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government's action violates the First Amendment and will have an "immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt Friday on the Vatican as a potential place for peace talks with Ukraine, after the United States, Italy and the pope expressed hope the city-state could host negotiations.

"It would be a bit inelegant for Orthodox countries to discuss on Catholic ground issues related to eliminating root causes (of the conflict)," Lavrov said, accusing Kyiv of "destroying" the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and adding: "For the Vatican itself it would not be very comfortable to, in these circumstances, host delegations from Orthodox countries."

As Lebanon suffered a war last year, Ali Chahrour was determined to keep making art, creating a performance inspired by the plight of migrant workers caught up in the conflict.

Months after a ceasefire largely halted the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Chahrour's work premiered in Beirut in early May with plans to take it to stages across Europe including at France's famed Avignon Festival.

At the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, rituals of faith unfold: worshippers kneel in prayer, visitors raise their palms skyward or fervently murmur invocations as they press their faces against an ornate structure enclosing where they believe the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad is entombed.

But it's more than just religious devotion that the golden-domed shrine became known for during Syria's prolonged civil war.

Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for humanitarian aid to reach the Gaza Strip and for an end to the "heartbreaking" toll on its people, as he presided over his first general audience in St. Peter's Square.

The Vatican said that around 40,000 people were on hand for the audience, which came just days after an estimated 200,000 people attended the inaugural Mass on Sunday for history's first American pope.

Two high-profile Catholics, Pope Leo XIV and U.S. Vice President JD Vance, met Monday ahead of a flurry of U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to make progress on a ceasefire in Russia's war in Ukraine.

Vance's motorcade was seen entering Vatican City just after 7:30 a.m. Vance, a Catholic convert, had led the U.S. delegation to the formal Mass opening the pontificate of the first American pope.

Sepideh Farsi is still in shock after an Israeli air strike in Gaza killed her documentary's main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, weeks before its Cannes premiere Thursday.

"Why would you kill someone and decimate an entire family just because she was taking photos?" she told AFP before the screening.