The Palestinian Islamist armed group Hamas that rules Gaza is reviving relations with the Iran-backed regime in Damascus after a decade-long rupture sparked by the outbreak of Syria's bloody civil war.
Analysts say the shift pushes Hamas deeper into the fold of the Iran-led "axis of resistance" against Israel that includes Syria as well as Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and Yemen's Huthi rebels.
Rights groups voiced alarm Tuesday over the extent of an Iranian crackdown on a Kurdish-populated city that has become a flashpoint for nationwide protests that have now lasted over three weeks.
Iran's clerical authorities have been shaken since mid-September by protests that erupted after the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested by the notorious morality police.
Israel said Tuesday it has reached a US-brokered agreement with Lebanon to settle their long-disputed maritime border, hailing a "historic agreement" that potentially unlocks significant offshore gas production for both countries.
Lebanon said the proposed final text was "satisfactory", while US President Joe Biden praised the "breakthrough" and urged all parties to stick to the deal.
Negotiations between the neighbouring countries, which are still technically at war, had suffered repeated setbacks since their launch in 2020.
A powerful US senator called Monday for Washington to freeze all cooperation with Saudi Arabia over its decision to "underwrite" Russia's war in Ukraine by slashing oil production.
Riyadh, Moscow and other top oil producers agreed last week to a deep cut in production to boost crude prices, in a move denounced by the United States as a concession to Moscow that would hurt the global economy.
Briton Rida Azeem knew her dental trip to Turkey had gone badly wrong the second she took off her mask.
"My husband said, 'What have they done to you? Your face is all sunk.'"
"I had big gaps underneath my gums and you could see all the metal bits (of the implants). It was done so badly it was unbelievable," the engineer from Manchester told AFP.
"Originally they were going to do five implants," said Azeem. But when the treatment was about to start, the dentists told her they would "have to remove all your teeth".
Some 1,200 Iraqi families have been forced out of southern marshes and farmlands over the past six months, a local official told AFP, as drought ravages swathes of the country.
The Mesopotamian Marshes, a UNESCO World Heritage site, have been battered by low rainfall and reduced flows in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers due to dams built upstream in Turkey and Iran.
Oil-rich Iraq, battered by decades of war, is also the world's fifth-most vulnerable country to some key effects of climate change, including water scarcity and desertification, say the United Nations.
US and Russian troops exchanged friendly greetings and posed for pictures together over the weekend on a northeast Syria highway in a rare display of congeniality between the rival forces.
Both Washington and Moscow have troops on the ground in Syria backing opposing sides of the war that has ravaged the Middle Eastern country since 2011.
Russia's war in Ukraine since February has exacerbated geopolitical tensions with the United States.
An international footballer, an influential tech-blogger, a woman who was merely eating her breakfast without a headscarf.
In Iran no-one who expresses dissent from the ruling theocratic system, including the famous, is safe from being caught in the dragnet of a crackdown that has seen hundreds arrested in more than three weeks of protests.
Activists say that when the unrest erupted last month over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested by the notorious morality police, the authorities initially resorted to lethal force, killing dozens in the space of days.
Iranian protesters remained defiant Monday with students staging sit-ins and some industrial workers going on strike despite a crackdown activists say has left dozens dead and hundreds more imprisoned.
Videos posted on social media indicated that protests flared at various points in the capital and other cities over recent days, with women burning headscarves and shouting slogans against the Islamic republic.
Authorities in Iran have returned the passport of Ali Daei, the country's football legend confirmed to AFP on Monday, after confiscating it for supporting protests over Mahsa Amini's death.
Iran has been gripped by nationwide demonstrations since the 22-year-old Kurdish woman's death was announced on September 16, three days after she was arrested in Tehran for allegedly violating the country's strict dress code.
The street violence has led to dozens of deaths, mostly of protesters but also of members of the security forces. Hundreds have also been arrested.
