White-robed worshippers from across the world have packed the streets of Mecca as Islam's holiest city prepares to host the biggest hajj pilgrimage since the coronavirus pandemic.

Banners welcoming the faithful, including the first international visitors since 2019, festooned squares and alleys, while armed security forces patrolled the ancient city, birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed.

Germany and Nigeria are set to sign an agreement in Berlin Friday paving the way for the return of centuries-old sculptures known as the Benin Bronzes that were taken from Africa in the 19th century and displayed in German museums and elsewhere.

Governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects that were looted during colonial times.

Young musicians, dancers, actors and comedians from across the Arab world took to the stage in Tunisia to express their visions of freedom, more than a decade after the Arab Spring uprisings.

The show, performed under the stars at a seaside theatre in the resort of Hammamet and broadcast across the region, featured winners of an online video competition to complete the phrase: "I will only be free when..."

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights.

Pelosi attended the morning Mass marking the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, during which Francis bestowed the woolen pallium stole on newly consecrated archbishops. She was seated in a VIP diplomatic section of the basilica and received Communion along with the rest of the congregants, according to two people who witnessed the moment.

Dona-Maria Nammour was looking for a love story. The night she met Mazen Jaber for the first time, they ended up dancing for hours.

Lebanon's caretaker interior minister has given instructions to security forces to stop gatherings of the LGBTQ community, following pressure from religious institutions.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ended the right to abortion in a seismic ruling that shreds half a century of constitutional protections on one of the most divisive and bitterly fought issues in American political life.

Egypt has detained three men after a video clip allegedly showing one of them singing and dancing at a mosque went viral online, the prosecutor's office said.

In the footage, a man can be seen dancing, jumping and singing with a microphone in a mosque to a song by Ahmed Moza, a popular performer of "mahraganat" music.

Israeli archaeologists on Wednesday unveiled a rare ancient mosque in the country's south that the antiquities officials said sheds light on the region's transition from Christianity to Islam.

The remains of the mosque, believed to be more than 1,200 years old, were discovered during works to build a new neighborhood in the Bedouin city of Rahat, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.

Pope Francis on Wednesday blasted the violence that plagues Mexico as he mourned the slayings of two of his "brother" Jesuits who were gunned down in a remote Mexican church by apparent drug gang members.

Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, offered prayers to the Jesuit community at the end of his weekly general audience, saying he was "saddened and dismayed" to learn of the slayings in Mexico's mountainous Chihuahua state.