An Egyptian activist and satirist detained for more than two years has been released, his family has announced.

The Nobel Peace Prize was Friday awarded to the World Food Program for feeding millions of people from Yemen to North Korea, with the coronavirus pandemic seen pushing millions more into hunger.

The WFP was honored for "its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict," Nobel committee chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said on unveiling the winner in Oslo.

The Nobel Prize for Literature is set to be awarded Thursday after several years of controversy and scandal for the world's pre-eminent literary accolade.

In 2018 the award was postponed after sex abuse allegations rocked the Swedish Academy, the secretive body that chooses the winners, and sparked a mass exodus of members.

A tragic love story that Simone de Beauvoir thought "too intimate" to publish during her lifetime will finally see the light of day Wednesday, 34 years after her death.

As the pandemic rages in the United States, Aracelis Bonet has had to make a choice between her job and caring for her autistic son.

Iranian Marjane Satrapi is famous for her films and graphic novels, but it is her painting which keeps her sane, she told AFP.

Americans Harvey J. Alter and Charles M. Rice, and British scientist Michael Houghton were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus.

Announcing the prize in Stockholm on Monday, the Nobel Committee noted that the trio's work helped explain a major source of blood-borne hepatitis that couldn't be explained by the hepatitis A and B viruses. Their work make possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives, the committee said.

Fashion designer Kenzo Takada, founder of the global Kenzo brand, died in Paris on Sunday after contracting Covid-19, his spokesman said.

Mask-clad Muslims circled Islam's holiest site along socially distanced paths on Sunday, as Saudi authorities partially resumed the year-round umrah pilgrimage with extensive health precautions adopted after a seven-month coronavirus hiatus.

The Ambassador of Mexico to Lebanon, José-Ignacio Madrazo, and the Chairman of LibanPost, Khalil Daoud, have led a ceremony for the joint issuance of a commemorative stamp, on the occasion of the 75th Anniversary of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Lebanon.

This is the result of collaboration between the Mexican Postal Service and LibanPost, with “generous support from the Centro Libanés in Mexico City,” said a statement issued by the Embassy of Mexico in Lebanon.