Khaled Bahlawan hammers nails into a traditional wooden boat he built by hand, toiling under the scorching sun on Syria's Mediterranean coast to preserve a disappearing ancient skill.
"We are the last family that makes wooden ships and boats in Syria," said the 39-year-old on the shores of Arwad island, near the city of Tartus.
"This is the legacy of our ancestors... We are fighting to preserve it every day".
An eight-metre high metal fence surrounds the Gharib family home in the occupied West Bank. To reach it they must pass through a gate remotely controlled by Israeli security forces.
Since Israel seized the territory in the Six-Day War of 1967, a Jewish settlement has sprung up on surrounding land claimed by the family leaving them isolated in their single-storey house on the edge of the Palestinian village of Beit Ijza.
"I don't know when this will end," sighed Sa'adat Gharib. "No one knows the pain my children are suffering."
Henrik Stenson, stripped of the European Ryder Cup captaincy after joining the breakaway LIV Golf circuit, shook off the controversy to win the LIV Golf Invitational Bedminster on Sunday.
"I guess we can agree I played like a captain," said the 46-year-old Swede in a dig at Ryder Cup Europe after he carded a two-under par 69 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
His 11-under total gave him a two-shot victory over Matthew Wolff and Dustin Johnson in the 54-hole, shotgun start event.
Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Sunday upped pressure on the United Nations to disband a commission investigating Israel, appealing to the secretary-general over "anti-Semitic" remarks from a member of the body.
The Commission of Inquiry (COI) investigating abuses in Israel and the Palestinian territories was created by the UN Human Rights Council last year after an 11-day war between Israel and armed militants in Gaza.
Israel's premier promised an investigation Sunday into allegations by a female former guard at a maximum security prison that she was repeatedly raped by a Palestinian inmate after being forced to work as a "sex slave" by her superiors.
Reports that female guards had been abused by inmates at Gilboa prison have circulated in Israeli media for several years.
Parts of Beirut's grain silos collapsed on Sunday, just days before the second anniversary of a catastrophic explosion at the Lebanese capital's port that ravaged the stores and swathes of the city.
AFP correspondents said a cloud of dust covered the port after the partial collapse of the silos, where a fire has been burning for more than two weeks.
Army helicopters doused the area with water to try to put out the blaze.
US envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut Sunday to push talks to resolve a bitter maritime border dispute between Lebanon and Israel over Mediterranean waters with offshore gas fields.
"Reaching a resolution is both necessary and possible, but can only be done through negotiations and diplomacy," the US State Department said in a statement ahead of Hochstein's visit.
Washington's envoy for global infrastructure and investment is "facilitating negotiations between Lebanon and Israel on the maritime boundary", the statement added.
Powerful Iraqi Shiite preacher Moqtada Sadr Sunday urged other factions to support a protest that has seen his followers occupy parliament in a dispute over who should name the next prime minister.
Nearly 10 months after elections, the oil-rich country is still without a new government due to the repeated failure of negotiations and the en-masse resignation last month of Sadr's bloc -- the largest in parliament.
Prince Charles, the heir to the British throne, accepted a £1 million ($1.19 million, 1.21 million euro) donation to his charitable trust from the family of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times reported.
Although there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the Saudi family members, the revelation increases scrutiny on the 73-year-old prince's charity organisations, which have been rocked by allegations of criminal wrong doing.
Hundreds of followers of powerful Iraqi Shiite preacher Moqtada Sadr began a second day camped at the country's parliament on Sunday.
Despite tear gas, water cannon and baking temperatures that touched 47 degrees Celsius (116 degrees Fahrenheit), they stormed the complex on Saturday after pulling down heavy concrete barricades on roads leading to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone of diplomatic and government buildings.
Nearly ten months after October elections, Iraq is still without a new government despite intense negotiations between factions.
