Valerie Torres' mother has tried to shield her from the worst of Venezuela's protracted crisis — the deadly protests, the sick people begging for help, the malnourished children with protruding ribs. At school, her teachers don't even broach the subject.

But just shy of her 10th birthday this month, the girl is perceptive beyond her years. She knows her fourth-grade classmate lied to their teacher saying he forgot a book at home when in fact he was still saving up to buy it; that neighbors, friends and even her grandmother have all fled the country in search of a better life; that her mother is bringing home fewer groceries.

Former General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim has started “calm planning” for the role that he will play in the coming period, al-Joumhouria newspaper reported on Friday.

The scene signaled a grave national emergency — dozens of riot police charged through the streets of Tel Aviv as crowds of anti-government protesters howled and roared. Their mission: to rescue Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's wife from a swanky salon where she was getting her hair done.

The protesters' Wednesday night siege of the beauty parlor, accompanied by chants of "shame, shame," cast a spotlight on Sara Netanyahu, a divisive figure long intertwined with her husband's political career.

The stuttering blasts of M-16s shattered the quiet in a West Bank village, surrounded by barley fields and olive groves. Young Palestinian men in Jaba once wanted to farm, residents say, but now, more and more want to fight.

Last week, dozens of them, wearing balaclavas and brandishing rifles with photos of their dead comrades plastered on the clips, burst into a school playground — showcasing Jaba's new militant group and paying tribute to its founder and another gunman who were killed in an Israeli military raid last month.

In Israel's divisive debate over the government's planned legal overhaul, proponents claim that curtailing the power of judges and courts is good for the country.

But, as their opponents often counter, other factors may be in play: Some of the leading politicians clamoring for these changes either face legal problems or believe the courts are obstructing their ideological agendas.

General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who has mediated the release of Westerners held in Syria and also acted as a mediator within Lebanon, stepped down Wednesday after attempts to extend his term failed.

Ibrahim's term ends Thursday, when he reaches retirement age of 64 in Lebanon. On Wednesday afternoon, he left his office and was replaced by Brig. Gen. Elias Baissary as acting head of the agency.

The White House is giving U.S. federal agencies 30 days to delete popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices amid growing concerns about security. Canada announced a similar ban.

Congress, the White House itself and more than half of U.S. states had already banned TikTok amid concerns that China could use its legal and regulatory powers to obtain private user data or to try to push misinformation or narratives favoring China. U.S. armed forces have prohibited the app on military devices, and the European Union's executive branch has temporarily banned TikTok from employee phones.

One Russian soldier tells his mother that the young Ukrainians dead from his first firefight looked just like him. Another explains to his wife that he's drunk because alcohol makes it easier to kill civilians. A third wants his girlfriend to know that in all the horror, he dreams about just being with her.

About 2,000 secret recordings of intercepted conversations between Russian soldiers in Ukraine and their loved ones back home offer a harrowing new perspective on Vladimir Putin's year-old war. There is a human mystery at the heart of this conversations heard in intercepted phone calls: How do people raised with a sense of right and wrong end up accepting and perpetrating terrible acts of violence?

The Embassies of Australia, Denmark, Japan and the United Kingdom in Lebanon will light up on Friday night their shared Embassies’ Complex in Beirut in the colors of the Ukrainian flag.

"Today marks a year since the brutal, unjustified and unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine. In that year, thousands of innocent Ukrainian people have been killed, and millions forced from their homes," the Ambassadors of the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, and Japan said in a joint statement.

The deaths of 11 Palestinians in an Israeli raid in the West Bank comes a year into a spiral of violence that has killed over 250 Palestinians and 35 Israelis in the past 12 months.

AFP looks back at some of the deadliest incidents since a spate of attacks in Israel in spring last year prompted authorities to launch a series of ever deadlier "counter-terrorism" raids.