Authorities used bulldozers to raze a number of Muslim-owned shops in New Delhi before India's Supreme Court halted the demolitions Wednesday, days after communal violence shook the capital and saw dozens arrested.

Shop owners searched through the rubble of their shops afterward to collect their belongings. But for nearly an hour after the Supreme Court order, officials continued to demolish structures, including the outer entrance and stairs leading into a mosque. They stopped the bulldozers just outside the entrance of a Hindu temple, about 50 meters (160 feet) from the mosque, and began to retreat, spurring outrage from Muslim residents who said they were being targeted.

Churches in Jerusalem are up in arms against Jewish "radicals" who are settling in the Christian Quarter and threatening a fragile religious balance in the ancient Holy City.

"We have a major problem here," said Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilus III in Jerusalem's Old City, which is split into historic Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters.

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.