Lebanese activists protested Sunday at a beach in the coastal city of Sidon after a woman said she was harassed there over her allegedly indecent bathing suit, an AFP correspondent said.

Defying a municipality ban on their demonstration, dozens of protesters, mostly women, gathered briefly in the Sunni Muslim-majority conservative city, the correspondent said.

On-set scandal may have haunted French director Catherine Corsini's new film, but the movie was well-received by critics in Cannes for its strong acting performances.

"The Homecoming," which premiered late Wednesday, lost some funding over an intimate scene featuring a 15-year-old actress that was ultimately cut from the final take.

On a gentle slope looking out over Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, villagers work their way across pink-dotted terraces, gathering perfumed Damask roses that are used for essential oils, sweets and cosmetics.

The rose harvest "gives you a bit of hope, it makes things beautiful, it calms you down -- it gives you strength to carry on", said Leila al-Dirani, picking the flowers from her family's land in the village of Qsarnaba.

Writer Salman Rushdie has made a public speech, nine months after being stabbed and seriously injured onstage, warning that freedom of expression in the West is under its most severe threat in his lifetime.

Rushdie delivered a video message to the British Book Awards, where he was awarded the Freedom to Publish award on Monday evening. Organizers said the honor "acknowledges the determination of authors, publishers and booksellers who take a stand against intolerance, despite the ongoing threats they face."

A nearly 150-year-old stained-glass church window that depicts a dark-skinned Jesus Christ interacting with women in New Testament scenes has stirred up questions about race, Rhode Island's role in the slave trade and the place of women in 19th century New England society.

The window installed at the long-closed St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Warren in 1878 is the oldest known public example of stained glass on which Christ is depicted as a person of color that one expert has seen.

Pope Francis joined Italy's conservative premier on Friday in encouraging Italians to have more children, denouncing the financial precariousness facing young couples and "selfish, egotistical" choices that have led to a record low birth rate that is threatening the country's economic future.

Francis urged concrete political action to invert the "demographic winter," which in population terms resulted in the disappearance of a city the size of Bari last year. Blasting couples who have pets instead of children, Francis called for resources to be dedicated to helping couples grow their families, saying it was necessary to "plant the future" with hope.

The British Ambassador to Lebanon, Hamish Cowell CMG, hosted a celebration of the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla on Wednesday, May 10 at the Sursock Palace Gardens in Beirut.

Oprah Winfrey's latest book project is one she helped write. Winfrey has teamed with the author, educator and Atlantic columnist Arthur C. Brooks on "Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier," to be published Sept. 12 by Portfolio Books.

"I started reading Arthur Brooks' column 'How to Build a Life' during the early days of the pandemic," Winfrey said in a statement released Wednesday by Portfolio, a Penguin Random House imprint. "I found myself happily anticipating each week's lesson, which turned out to be a recipe for growing forward. When I discovered he taught happiness at Harvard, I wanted to extend that to the rest of us."

Pope Francis and the Orthodox Coptic pope, Tawadros II, delivered a joint blessing Wednesday from St. Peter's Square in a significant ecumenical gesture to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a historic meeting of their predecessors.

Tawadros, the Orthodox Coptic patriarch of Alexandria, in Egypt, joined Francis on the stage for the entirety of Francis' weekly general audience. He delivered a lengthy speech at the start in Arabic and then joined Francis in blessing the crowd at the end on a rainy Wednesday morning.

Billboards across Iran's capital proclaim that women should wear their mandatory headscarves to honor their mothers. But perhaps for the first time since the chaotic days following Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, more women — both young and old — choose not to do so.

Such open defiance comes after months of protests over the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the country's morality police, for wearing her hijab too loosely. While the demonstrations appear to have cooled, the choice by some women not to cover their hair in public poses a new challenge to the country's theocracy. The women's pushback also lays bare schisms in Iran that had been veiled for decades.