By Feras Dalatey and Maya Gebeily

DUBAI, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Syrian authorities have asked Lebanese security forces to hand over more than 200 senior officers who fled to Lebanon after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, following a Reuters investigation that showed how the neighboring country was a hub for insurgent plotting.

By Nayera Abdallah and Maayan Lubell

DUBAI/JERUSALEM, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The death toll from unrest in Iran climbed to almost 2,600, a rights group said on Wednesday, as Tehran stepped up diplomatic contacts with U.S.-allies in the region over a crisis that has drawn threats of intervention from President Donald Trump.

According to an Israeli assessment, Trump has decided to intervene but the scope and timing of this action remains unclear, an Israeli official said.

Iran on Wednesday vowed fast-track trials for people arrested over a massive wave of protests, after US President Donald Trump threatened "very strong action" if the Islamic republic goes ahead with hangings.

In Tehran, authorities held a funeral ceremony for over 100 members of the security forces and other "martyrs" killed in the demonstrations, which authorities have branded as "riots" while accusing protesters of waging "acts of terror".

By Michele Kambas

NICOSIA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Former Cyprus President George Vassiliou, who died on Wednesday aged 94, once risked arrest in Cold War Hungary smuggling a banned political manifesto past the Iron Curtain.

In 1956, as Soviet tanks crushed a popular uprising in Budapest, he agreed to carry to the West the document, one of the anonymous "Hungaricus" pamphlets that gave the outside world its first uncensored accounts of the crackdown.

PARIS, Jan 14 (Reuters) - France suspects that Iran's crackdown on demonstrations across the country is the most violent in the country's contemporary history, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Wednesday.

"What we suspect is that this is the most violent repression in Iran's contemporary history and that it must absolutely stop," Barrot said.

(Reporting by Benoit Van Overstraeten and John Irish;Editing by Louise Rasmussen)

DUBAI, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The death toll from protests in Iran has reached 2,571 people, the U.S.-based HRANA rights group said on Wednesday, as the Islamic Republic's clerical rulers face the biggest wave of dissent in years.

U.S. President Donald Trump urged Iranians on Tuesday to keep protesting, promising help is on the way. Iranian officials, however, have accused U.S. and Israel of fuelling violence in the country and blamed the deaths on "terrorist operatives" receiving foreign guidance to instigate.

With heavy hearts, Bedouins in a West Bank village dismantle their sheep pens and load belongings onto trucks, forced from their homes in the Israeli-occupied territory by rising settler violence.

While attacks by Israeli settlers affect communities across the West Bank, the semi-nomadic Bedouins are among the territory's most vulnerable, saying they suffer from forced displacement due in large part to a lack of law enforcement.

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - New York Attorney General Letitia James' office said on Tuesday it reached a settlement with Betar US that would wind down the far-right Zionist group's New York operations after an investigation found the group intimidated pro-Palestinian activists.

The planet logged its third hottest year on record in 2025, extending a run of unprecedented heat, with no relief expected in 2026, global climate monitors said Wednesday.

The last 11 years have now been the warmest ever recorded, with 2024 topping the podium and 2023 in second place, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and Berkeley Earth, a California-based non-profit research organisation.

For the first time, global temperatures exceeded 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times on average over the last three years, Copernicus said in its annual report.

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Brunei's ruler Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah will undergo knee replacement surgery this weekend, with a recovery period expected to last between two to three months, his office said.

The 79-year-old sultan, one of the world's longest-reigning monarchs, will be limiting his presence at national and official ceremonies during the recovery process for rest and physiotherapy sessions, the office said in a statement on Tuesday.