Millions of Muslims around the world on Monday marked the start of Ramadan, a month of intense prayer, dawn-to-dusk fasting and nightly feasts. Others will begin fasting a day later, Tuesday, due to a moon-sighting methodology that can lead to different countries declaring the start of Ramadan a day or two apart.

Here are some questions and answers about Islam's holiest month:

More than a billion Muslims observed the start of Ramadan on Monday, but in the besieged cities of Syria and Iraq residents were struggling with how to mark the holy month.

Islamic authorities across much of the world -- from the most populous Muslim-majority country Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, home to the faith's holiest sites -- announced the start of the fasting month with the sighting of the crescent moon.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday urged Turkish women to have at least three children, saying a woman's life was "incomplete" if she failed to have offspring.

A Swedish nurse who converted to Catholicism and helped dozens of Jews during the Holocaust was made a saint on Sunday, Sweden's first in six centuries.

Africa's best barista doesn't drink coffee, nor even really like it, yet two-time Kenyan champ Martin Shabaya won the Africa round and next month competes at the World Barista Championships.

Shabaya, 26, has only been pouring coffee for five years but his success is indicative of a country that –- unlike him –- is learning to love coffee.

Domes inspired by the royal palaces of India rise from a new Bollywood theme park under construction in Dubai, part of a drive to lure millions more tourists to the emirate.

It already boasts opulent shopping malls and numerous luxury resorts, but the Gulf city-state has even grander ambitions and the film industry is center stage.

It has already been dubbed an "adult Disneyland" and "the amusement park of our dreams" by U.S. college students.

But the Cite du Vin -- a new museum in the French city of Bordeaux dedicated to the history of wine -- is not quite the palace of bacchanalian revels of online fantasy.

Tens of thousands of homosexuals, transgender people, gay activists and sympathizers thronged the streets of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Friday for the annual Gay Pride parade.

The trappings of a dream Paris holiday -- a visit to the Louvre, cruising the Seine under the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower -- have been drowned under torrential rainfall this week.

The book Beirut at dawn. A bus leaves the Charles Helou station en route to Damascus. Seven passengers are on board, one of whom is a prominent Lebanese politician. Before crossing the border, the bus is accosted and derailed. All seven passengers are gunned down. A botanist studying a rare occurrence of acacias nearby witnesses the horror.

While the nation around him plunges into conspiracy theories and chaos, the botanist realizes he holds the only clue to the mystery: his injured Acacia. This sends him on a quest for answers, through a minefield of national fears and family secrets, deep into a private underworld.