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Former Mossad chief says Israel enforcing apartheid system in West Bank

A former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank, joining a tiny but growing list of retired officials to endorse an idea that remains largely on the fringes of Israeli discourse and international diplomacy.

Tamir Pardo becomes the latest former senior official to have concluded that Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank amounts to apartheid, a reference to the system of racial separation in South Africa that ended in 1994.

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Some in Africa are celebrating the coups, many are fed up and desperate for change

After mutinous soldiers in Gabon announced they had deposed the country's president, many residents danced in the streets and declared themselves free from the presidential family's 55-year rule. It's becoming a familiar scene in West and Central Africa, which has recorded eight coups since 2020.

"It is an expression of the popular dissatisfaction," said Hermann Ngoulou in the Gabonese capital of Libreville. "The country has been experiencing a deep crisis on all levels due to bad governance, the rising cost of food (and) the high cost of living."

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Syria protests spurred by economic misery stir memories of 2011 uprising

Anti-government protests in southern Syria have stretched into a second week, with demonstrators waving the colorful flag of the minority Druze community, burning banners of President Bashar Assad's government and at one point raiding several offices of his ruling party.

The protests were initially driven by surging inflation and the war-torn country's spiraling economy but quickly shifted focus, with marchers calling for the fall of the Assad government.

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Russia's Wagner mercenaries face uncertainty after leader's death

The Wagner Group's presence extends from the ancient battlegrounds of Syria to the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa, projecting the Kremlin's global influence with mercenaries accused of using brutal force and profiting on mineral riches they seized.

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CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran haunts country as people still try to make sense of it

Seventy years after a CIA-orchestrated coup toppled Iran's prime minister, its legacy remains both contentious and complicated for the Islamic Republic as tensions stay high with the United States.

While highlighted as a symbol of Western imperialism by Iran's theocracy, the coup unseating Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh — over America's fears about a possible tilt toward the Soviet Union and the loss of Iranian crude oil — appeared backed at the time by the country's leading Shiite clergy.

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Nerve agents, poison, window falls: Kremlin foes attacks over the years

The attacks range from the exotic — poisoned by drinking polonium-laced tea or touching a deadly nerve agent — to the more mundane of getting shot at close range. Some take a fatal plunge from an open window.

Over the years, Kremlin political critics, turncoat spies and investigative journalists have been killed or assaulted in a variety of ways.

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Wagner leader, Russian mutineer, 'Putin's chef': The many sides of Yevgeny Prigozhin

Yevgeny Prigozhin's fate has been entwined with the Kremlin for decades — as a trusted government contractor, and the head of the Wagner mercenary army that fought in Ukraine and has been blamed for doing Russia's dirty work in Syria and Africa.

But when he turned his men toward Moscow two months ago, many inside Russia and beyond started wondering just how long he could last after drawing the fury of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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Four years into crisis: Lebanon's leaders bet on tourism and gas, ignore reforms

Four years into its historic economic meltdown, Lebanon's political elites, masters at survival, are pushing for a recovery that would sidestep tough reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

Economic experts and former officials involved in designing Lebanon's original IMF-approved recovery plan in 2020 say the political leadership and associates in the banking sector are deliberately implementing a "shadow plan" to torpedo the deal and place the burden of bailing out the financial system on ordinary Lebanese who are already impoverished by the crisis.

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After Israeli raids, Palestinian police struggle in militant hotbed

Last month, after the biggest Israeli military raid on a Palestinian refugee camp in the occupied West Bank in years, Palestinians turned their wrath on their own security forces.

They unleashed gunfire, firebombs and pipe bombs at Palestinian security buildings in an outpouring of rage against the Palestinian Authority's failure to protect them from the devastating July 3 raid and a long-running, deeply unpopular security alliance with Israel.

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Syria to Libya to the EU: how people-smugglers operate

For desperate Syrians, a WhatsApp message saying "I want to go to Europe" can be all they need to start a treacherous journey to Libya and then across the Mediterranean.

Twelve years after conflict broke out when President Bashar al-Assad repressed peaceful pro-democracy protests, Syrians are still trying to escape a war that has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.

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