On Beirut's chaotic, car-choked streets, Lebanese student Fatima Fakih rides a shiny purple bus to university, one of a fleet rolled out by authorities to revive public transport in a country struggling to deliver basic services.
The 19-year-old says the spacious public buses are "safer, better and more comfortable", than the informal network of private buses and minivans that have long substituted for mass transport.
Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa has in six months established himself internationally and had crippling sanctions removed, but still needs to rebuild national institutions, revive the economy and unite the fractured country.
AFP looks at the main challenges facing Sharaa, whose Islamist-led coalition toppled longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad on December 8.
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Cries of grief echoed across southern Gaza's Nasser Hospital Monday as dozens came to mourn Hossam Wafi, after the father of six was killed while attempting to get supplies to feed his family.
His mother, Nahla Wafi, sobbed uncontrollably over her son, who was among 31 people killed by Israeli fire while trying to reach a food distribution site the previous day, according to the Palestinian territory's civil defence agency.
"He went to get food for his daughters -- and came back dead," said Nahla Wafi who lost a son and had relatives injured on Sunday.
Israeli forces on Monday blocked an international media tour in the occupied West Bank, preventing journalists from entering the village of Oscar-winning Palestinian director Basel Adra who decried worsening Israeli violence.
Adra's film "No Other Land" chronicles the forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli troops and settlers in Masafer Yatta, an area in the southern West Bank that Israel declared a restricted military zone in the 1980s.
French prosecutors were on Monday probing a terror motive after a man who had posted racist videos shot dead his Tunisian neighbour and badly wounded a Turkish man in the south of France.
The shooting late on Saturday in Puget-sur-Argens, in the southern region of Var, came after a Malian man was stabbed to death in April in a mosque, also in southern France, as concern grows over hate crimes against Muslims.
The shooting was initially investigated by regional prosecutors as a suspected murder motivated by the victim's ethnicity or religion.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called Monday for an independent investigation into the killing and wounding of scores of Palestinians near a US-backed aid centre in Gaza the day before.
Gaza's civil defence agency said Israeli gunfire killed at least 31 people and wounded 176 near the aid distribution site in the southern city of Rafah on Sunday, with medics at nearby hospitals also reporting a deluge of gunshot wound victims.
The Israeli military denied firing at people "while they were near or within" the site.
US President Donald Trump on Monday ruled out allowing Iran to enrich uranium under any nuclear deal between the foes -- as Tehran defended what it said was its "peaceful" pursuit of fuel for power generation.
Uranium enrichment has remained a key point of contention in five rounds of talks since April to ink a new accord to replace the deal with major powers that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
Iraqi authorities on Monday launched a probe into a mass die-off of fish in the southern marshlands, the latest in a string of such events in recent years.
One possible cause for the localised die-off could be a shortage of oxygen sparked by low water flow, increased evaporation and rising temperatures fuelled by climate change.
Another possible reason could be chemicals used by fishermen to make it easier to catch their prey, local officials and activists told AFP.
More than a million Muslim pilgrims poured into the holy city of Mecca ahead of the annual hajj, with authorities vowing to hold a safer pilgrimage amid searing desert heat and a massive crackdown on illegal visitors.
Officials have beefed up heat mitigation measures hoping to avoid a repeat of last year's hajj, which saw 1,301 pilgrims die as temperatures reached 51.8 degrees Celsius (125.2 Fahrenheit).
Temperatures were forecast to exceed 40 degrees Celsius this week as one of the world's largest annual religious gatherings starts on Wednesday.
A man yelling "free Palestine" used incendiary devices to torch protesters rallying in support of Israeli hostages, injuring at least eight people in the US state of Colorado on Sunday.
The FBI said it was investigating the incident as a "targeted terror attack" and identified the suspect as 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman.
He was booked into the county jail just before midnight on multiple felony charges, according to county records. His bond has been set at $10 million.
