Typically, around 100,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews would gather next week on Mount Meron in northern Israel to celebrate the Lag BaOmer holiday.

However, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the large festival will replaced with a smaller symbolic ceremony, citing concerns about the gathering being attacked by Hezbollah. Similar restrictions were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and previous wars.

First came the racist abuse against Vinícius Júnior. Then the unwanted kiss by the nation's top soccer official. And now Spain is dealing with the fallout of anti-Muslim chants during a friendly match against Egypt.

Success on the pitch for both Spain's women and men's teams has been partially overshadowed in recent years by incidents of racism, sexism and xenophobia.

Pope Leo XIV urged the United States and Iran to return to talks to end the war Thursday, in a wide-ranging press conference en route home from his trip to Africa.

He called for a new "culture of peace" to replace the recourse to violence whenever conflicts arise.

Pope Leo XIV is visiting one of Equatorial Guinea's notorious prisons Wednesday, drawing attention to human rights abuses that campaigners have denounced for years and especially after the U.S. began deporting third-country migrants here.

Leo's visit to the prison in Bata, the central African country's port city, continues the tradition of Pope Francis, who made prison visits a priority of his pontificate. Francis' aim was to give prisoners hope and to remind them the church was with them, while also shining a spotlight on judicial abuses, overcrowding and other injustices.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, on Monday expressed “profound indignation and unreserved condemnation” of the defacing of a statue of Jesus Christ by an Israeli soldier in Lebanon, saying the act “constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith.”

Pope Leo XIV is following in the footsteps of his spiritual father, St. Augustine, making a pilgrimage to the archaeological ruins of eastern Algeria where the fifth-century titan of early Christianity lived, died and wrote some of the most important works in Western thought.

Leo's visit to Annaba, the modern-day Hippo, is a spiritual homecoming for the American pope on his second full day in Algeria. He arrived Monday on the first-ever papal visit, against the backdrop of the war in Iran and his calls for peace that have sparked a feud with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Pope Leo XIV on Monday began a landmark visit to Algeria in the first trip to the Muslim-majority country by a pontiff.

Pope Leo XIV on Monday said he had "no intention to debate" with Donald Trump, after the U.S. president criticized him over his comments on the U.S.-Iran war.

Pope Leo said Tuesday threats to inflict widespread damage on civilian targets in Iran were "unacceptable" and could breach international law .

Lebanese Christians marked Easter Sunday by turning their prayers to the south, where villages remain trapped by fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.