To resist, ignore or yield? Hollywood and the film industry, long a haven for progressive idealists, are braced for difficult choices in the era of US President Donald Trump.

At the Berlin film festival this week, the radical changes unfolding in the United States and on the world stage loomed over every discussion and led many films screening there to be viewed through a new political lens.

Pope Francis' respiratory tract infection is presenting a "complex clinical picture" that will require further hospitalization, the Vatican said Monday as concerns grew about the increasingly frail health of the 88-year-old pontiff.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said the results of tests conducted in recent days and Monday indicate the pope is suffering from a "polymicrobial respiratory tract infection" that has necessitated a further change in his drug therapy. Scientists say polymicrobial diseases are caused by a mix of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites.

Experts are returning to Syria's war-ravaged heritage sites, hoping to lay the groundwork for restoring them and reviving tourism, which they say could provide a much-needed boost to the country's decimated economy after nearly 14 years of war.

Once-thriving landmarks like the ancient city of Palmyra and the medieval Crusader castle of Crac des Chevaliers remain scarred by years of conflict, but local tourists are returning to the sites, and conservationists hope their historical and cultural significance will eventually draw international visitors back.

Americans who followed news influencers during the presidential campaign were more likely to hear positive reports about Donald Trump than they were about Kamala Harris, a study has revealed.

Influencers reviewed by the Pew Research Center talked about Trump and Harris on social media about equally, but there were more posts about Trump and they tended to be more favorable.

Pope Francis issued a major rebuke Tuesday to the Trump administration's mass deportation of migrants, warning that the program to forcefully deport people purely because of their illegal status deprives them of their inherent dignity and "will end badly."

Francis took the remarkable step of addressing the U.S. migrant crackdown in a letter to U.S. bishops who have criticized the expulsions as harming the most vulnerable.

Israeli police raided a long-established Palestinian-owned bookstore in east Jerusalem, detaining the owners and confiscating books about the decades-long conflict. The police claimed the books incited violence.

The Educational Bookshop, established over 40 years ago, is a hub of intellectual life in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed to its capital in a move not recognized internationally. Most of the city's Palestinian population lives in east Jerusalem, and the Palestinians want it to be the capital of their future state.

Salman Rushdie was so stunned when a masked man started to stab him on a stage in western New York that the author didn't even try to fight back, a prosecutor said Monday during opening statements in the suspect's attempted murder trial.

Prosecutors told jurors that the author came "dangerously close" to dying.

For over 850 years, the leaning minaret of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri stood as an iconic landmark in the Iraqi city of Mosul until it was destroyed by the Islamic State group in 2017.

Nearly eight years after IS militants were driven out of the city, the minaret has been rebuilt as part of a massive internationally-funded reconstruction project in the historic city.

In 2022, Salman Rushdie was about to deliver a lecture before a live audience in western New York when a man ran towards him and plunged a knife into the author's hand as he raised it in self-defense.

"After that there are many blows, to my neck, to my chest, to my eye, everywhere," Rushdie recalled in a memoir that followed. "I feel my legs give way, and I fall."

Karla Sofía Gascón, the Oscar-nominated trans actor and star of the movie "Emilia Pérez," is apologizing for her old posts on social media that denigrated Islam and that called George Floyd "a drug addict and a hustler."

"As someone in a marginalized community, I know this suffering all too well and I am deeply sorry to those I have caused pain," the actor said in a statement via Netflix, where her film can be streamed. "All my life I have fought for a better world. I believe light will always triumph over darkness."