The Biden administration on Friday released a screening tool to help identify disadvantaged communities long plagued by environmental hazards, but it won't include race as a factor in deciding where to devote resources.

Administration officials told reporters that excluding race will make projects less likely to draw legal challenges and will be easier to defend, even as they acknowledged that race has been a major factor in terms of who experiences environmental injustice.

Israel has formally announced it would not cooperate with a special commission formed by the United Nations' top human rights body to investigate alleged abuses against Palestinians, saying the probe and its chairwoman were unfairly biased against Israel.

The decision, delivered in a scathing letter to the commission's head, Navi Pillay, further strained what already is a tense relationship between Israel and the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council in Geneva.

After a year-long jam, a mammoth Israeli strawberry is entering the record books.

Weighing a whopping 289 grams (10.19 ounces, more than half a pound), the titanic berry this week was declared the world's largest by Guinness World Records.

An iconic Gaza bookstore destroyed in an Israeli airstrike last year has reopened, lifting the spirits of its ecstatic owner and a large crowd of well-wishers celebrating the moment.

The five-story building that housed Samir Mansour's bookstore on its ground floor was reduced to rubble during the 11-day war between Israel and the Palestinian territory's Hamas rulers in May. The 100,000 books at the shop became piles of torn papers mired in ash and dust.

A year ago, Libya looked to be on a fragile path toward democracy, after more than a decade of civil war. Now, it appears to be sliding back toward strife and division.

After tentative steps towards unity, the country is once again being pulled apart, with two rival prime ministers claiming power.

The Jordanian military says a crackdown on drug smugglers along the Syrian border is delivering results.

During a media tour along the Syrian border on Thursday, Col. Mustafa al-Hiyari said the military was forced into action in response to increased smuggling activity and violence. In January, an army officer was killed in a shootout with smugglers.

The Russian military on Friday announced massive drills of its strategic forces, a stark reminder of the country's nuclear might amid Western fears that Moscow might be preparing to invade Ukraine.

The Defense Ministry said Russian President Vladimir Putin will personally oversee Saturday's exercise, which will involve multiple practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

Saudi Arabia is signaling it isn't willing to pump more oil and won't push for changes to an agreement with Russia and other producers that has kept a lid on oil production levels.

This has Washington concerned as gasoline prices rise and tensions with Russia over Ukraine fuel market uncertainty.

The Israeli military said it has shot down an unmanned aircraft launched by Hizbullah into Israeli airspace.

The incident occurred just a day after Hizbullah's chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said his group has been manufacturing military drones in Lebanon and has the technology to turn thousands of missiles in its possession into precision-guided munitions.

A Syrian military helicopter crash-landed in a rugged mountainous area during a training mission in the country's northwest on Thursday, leaving two of the five crew members dead.

State media quoted an unnamed military official as saying that the helicopter faced technical problems while flying over the coastal province of Latakia and crash-landed in a mountainous area.