Artificial intelligence will encourage more people to create music in the future and is not a threat to the industry, the founder and CEO of streaming giant Spotify said.

Artists using machine-learning tools to produce music have given rise to concerns about whether AI-generated music -- even entirely fake artists -- could one day replace human artists.

They lined up to see her, silent and wonderstruck: Inside an open silver casket was Saint Teresa of Ávila, more than 440 years after her death.

Catholic worshippers have been flocking to Alba de Tormes, a town ringed by rolling pastures in western Spain where the remains of the Spanish saint, mystic and 16th-century religious reformer were on display this month.

The Roman basilica of the Augustinians — Pope Leo XIV's religious order — preserves an iconic painting of the Virgin Mary by Caravaggio, the blockbuster artist who revolutionized the use of light and darkness in Western art.

A new exhibit of works by the Baroque painter is now on view in Rome until July 6, allowing for an updated look at his connection with spirituality.

In Beddawi Camp, North Lebanon, Ghazal walks into her new classroom with a big smile. "It’s bright. We have a nice playground," says the 5th grader. "I’m happy to be here every day."

The 10-year-old’s joy is shared by hundreds of children in the camp benefiting from improved schools, as well as thousands of refugees across Palestine Refugee Camps who now have safer infrastructure and better access to clean water.

Salman Rushdie said Monday he was "pleased" with the maximum 25-year jail sentence handed to a man who tried to kill him with a knife at a New York cultural center in 2022.

"I was pleased that he got the maximum available, and hopefully he uses it to reflect upon his deeds," Rushdie told BBC radio in an interview.

Ash dangled precariously from Iosif Skordis' cigarette as he reminisced with fellow villagers in a language on the edge of extinction, one that partly traces its roots to the language Jesus Christ once spoke.

The 97-year-old Skordis is one of only 900 people in the world who speak Cypriot Maronite Arabic, or Sanna. Today, his village of Kormakitis is the last bastion of a language once spoken by tens of thousands of people across dozens of villages.

Harvard University is challenging the Trump administration's decision to bar the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students, calling it unconstitutional retaliation for defying the White House's political demands.

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in Boston, Harvard said the government's action violates the First Amendment and will have an "immediate and devastating effect for Harvard and more than 7,000 visa holders."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cast doubt Friday on the Vatican as a potential place for peace talks with Ukraine, after the United States, Italy and the pope expressed hope the city-state could host negotiations.

"It would be a bit inelegant for Orthodox countries to discuss on Catholic ground issues related to eliminating root causes (of the conflict)," Lavrov said, accusing Kyiv of "destroying" the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and adding: "For the Vatican itself it would not be very comfortable to, in these circumstances, host delegations from Orthodox countries."

As Lebanon suffered a war last year, Ali Chahrour was determined to keep making art, creating a performance inspired by the plight of migrant workers caught up in the conflict.

Months after a ceasefire largely halted the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Chahrour's work premiered in Beirut in early May with plans to take it to stages across Europe including at France's famed Avignon Festival.

At the Sayyida Zeinab shrine, rituals of faith unfold: worshippers kneel in prayer, visitors raise their palms skyward or fervently murmur invocations as they press their faces against an ornate structure enclosing where they believe the granddaughter of Prophet Muhammad is entombed.

But it's more than just religious devotion that the golden-domed shrine became known for during Syria's prolonged civil war.