Pope Francis presided at his weekly audience with the public at the Vatican, but he said that he's still unwell and asked an aide to read his remarks for him on Wednesday, a day after canceling an overseas trip.

Francis, who will turn 87 on Dec. 17 and had part of one lung removed as a young man, coughed near the end of the hourlong audience in a Vatican auditorium as he made some final comments, then stood up from his chair on the stage to give his blessing.

Pope Francis is receiving antibiotics intravenously to treat a lung inflammation and will scale back some appointments, but he doesn't have pneumonia or fever, the Vatican said.

Francis himself on Sunday revealed that he was suffering from the inflammation problem, explaining why he didn't keep his weekly window appointment to greet people in St. Peter's Square. Instead, he gave his blessing from the chapel of the hotel on Vatican grounds where he lives.

In a high-profile showdown, Rome, Busan and Riyadh are the top contenders to become the host city of the 2030 World Expo as the organizing body prepares to hold a vote in the French capital on Tuesday.

With the stakes high, each city has escalated its campaign efforts, showcasing unique visions and ambitious promises to secure the rights to the globally prestigious event.

The woman refused to sell Captain Saleha Jabeen a hijab to don with her military uniform. While many civilian Muslims tell Jabeen she makes them proud, others are horrified by her decision to serve. "You're gonna go kill Muslims," the store owner told her that day.

Major Rafael Lantigua Jr. has experienced the flip side of that struggle. Angered by an attack on U.S. troops in Iraq, a fellow service member once barked at Lantigua: "Why can't you call your people and tell them to stop?"

Irish writer Paul Lynch won the Booker Prize for fiction on Sunday with what judges called a "soul-shattering" novel about a woman's struggle to protect her family as Ireland collapses into totalitarianism and war.

"Prophet Song," set in a dystopian fictional version of Dublin, was awarded the 50,000-pound ($63,000) literary prize at a ceremony in London. Canadian writer Esi Edugyan, who chaired the judging panel, said the book is "a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave" in which Lynch "pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness."

Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew — but never disclosed — it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint described in reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The complaint, originally made public in redacted form, was the opening salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.

In black robes, white moustaches and traditional hats, Druze religious elders stood before the coffin of Israeli soldier Adi Malik Harb, killed fighting Hamas militants in Gaza.

But while Israel's Druze minority serve in the military and fight and die for the country, many of them say their communities are marginalized and deprived of public investment while families are fined crippling sums for building homes due to selective enforcement of planning rules.

Chinese President Xi Jinping signaled that China will send new pandas to the United States, calling them "envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples."

"We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples," Xi said Wednesday during a dinner speech with business leaders.

The latest honor for Salman Rushdie was a prize kept secret until minutes before he rose from his seat to accept it.

On Tuesday night, the author received the first-ever Lifetime Disturbing the Peace Award, presented by the Vaclav Havel Center on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Only a handful of the more than 100 attendees had advance notice about Rushdie, whose whereabouts have largely been withheld from the general public since he was stabbed repeatedly in August of 2022 during a literary festival in Western New York.

Pope Francis met with European rabbis on Monday and decried antisemitism, war and terrorism in a written speech he declined to read, saying he wasn't feeling well.

Francis told the rabbis during the audience in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace that he was very happy to receive them, but added: "I'm not feeling well, and so I prefer not to read the speech but give it to you, so you can take it with you."