President Michel Aoun expressed Wednesday his support for Palestinians and Jerusalemites, after a weekend of violence in Jerusalem.

"The systematic attacks of the Israeli occupation forces on al-Aqsa Mosque will not change the identity of the Holy City," Aoun said.

Indonesia's Parliament approved a far-reaching law on Tuesday that sets punishments for sexual violence after being spurred into action by a recent case in which an Islamic boarding school principal raped and impregnated several students.

The legislation had languished for years amid arguments that it contravenes religious and cultural values in the world's biggest Muslim-majority nation.

A leading Egyptian pro-democracy activist who has been imprisoned for more than 3 1/2 years has obtained a British passport, his family said. The move is likely meant to pressure Egyptian authorities to release him.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah, an outspoken dissident, rose to prominence with the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East and in Egypt toppled long-time President Hosni Mubarak. The 40-year old activist spent most of the past decade behind bars and his detention has become a symbol of Egypt's return to autocratic rule.

Camila Cabello says she found joy in her roots while working on "Familia," her new studio album. The pop singer and songwriter, born in Havana to a Cuban mother and a Mexican father, immersed herself in the music she listened to while growing up and even ventured to write for the first time a couple of songs fully in Spanish.

"I was curious what the process would be, because my process in English is very like me on a mic, and I just sing whatever kind of comes to my head, including lyrics. So I was like, 'I wonder what's gonna come out in Spanish,'" she said in a recent interview via Zoom from Los Angeles.

U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea has participated in the inauguration of the Hinterland Archaeological Heritage Project in Jabal Moussa, funded by the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, the U.S. Embassy said on Monday.

Actor Kevin Spacey has asked a judge to throw out actor Anthony Rapp's sex abuse lawsuit, saying through his lawyers that allegations that he abused the then-teenage Rapp at a 1980s party are false.

The lawyers wrote in papers filed in Manhattan federal court that the alleged events Rapp described never occurred. Rapp has appeared in "Rent" on Broadway and in "Star Trek: Discovery" on television.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims have taken part in Palm Sunday celebrations in Jerusalem at the start of the Holy Week.

The holiday this year comes as tourists are returning to the Holy Land following two years of disruption during the pandemic. It also is taking place as tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are rising amid a spate of recent Palestinian attacks in Israel that have prompted military raids in the occupied West Bank in response.

A rare video has appeared of al-Qaida's chief praising an Indian Muslim woman who in February defied a ban on hijab wearing, revealing the first proof in months that he is still alive.

Rumors of the death of Ayman al-Zawahri have persistently circulated, but in a video released Tuesday and translated by the SITE Intelligence Group, the reclusive al-Qaida chief praises Muskan Khan who defied a ban on the wearing of the hijab in schools in India's southwestern state of Karnataka.

Pablo Picasso's track-record with women certainly would not make him a feminist pin-up today. 

There were two wives, at least six mistresses and countless lovers -- with a tendency to abandon women when they became ill, a voracious appetite for prostitutes, and some eye-popping age differences (his second wife was 27 when he married her at 79).

Israel will allow women, children and men over 40 from the West Bank to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday in an apparent bid to help calm tensions during the holy month of Ramadan.

The government said in a statement that it could further relax restrictions if things stay quiet. The use of incentives around the flashpoint shrine, built on a hilltop compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount, comes a year after flare-ups led to the Israel-Gaza war in May.