Victims of torture in Syria and human rights activists say they hope the upcoming verdict in a landmark trial will be a first step toward justice for countless Syrians who suffered abuse at the hands of President Bashar Assad's government in the country's long-running conflict.

A court in the German city of Koblenz is scheduled to deliver its ruling Thursday in the trial of Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian secret police officer who is accused of crimes against humanity for overseeing the abuse of detainees at a jail near Damascus a decade ago.

Austria's foreign minister said Wednesday that the European Union wants to help Lebanon escape its economic meltdown, but only if the country's leaders clean up Beirut's affairs.

Alexander Schallenberg told reporters after meeting his Lebanese counterpart in Beirut that Lebanon should reach a deal with the International Monetary Fund, move forward with the investigation into the August 2020 port blast and restructure the hard-hit banking sector.

The presence of a senior Iranian official at the investiture of Nicaragua's president has angered Argentina, which alleges the official was involved in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Rezaei is among several Iranians sought by Argentina in the bombing. Argentine prosecutors allege that senior Iranian officials entrusted Hizbullah to carry it out.

Egypt's leader has criticized Europe's handling of the migration crisis and its refusal to receive refugees arriving at its borders, saying his own country has taken in millions of people who left their home countries.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt hosts at least 6 million people who fled conflict and poverty at home. He said his government, unlike some other countries, doesn't hold migrants in refugee camps but allows them to live freely in the community.

North Korea said Wednesday its leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a successful flight test of a hypersonic missile he claimed would remarkably increase the country's nuclear "war deterrent."

The state media report came a day after the militaries of the United States, South Korea and Japan said they detected North Korea firing a suspected ballistic missile into its eastern sea.

Moscow and Washington have both taken uncompromising stands ahead of more talks amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, with the U.S. rebuffing a demand to halt NATO expansion and the Kremlin saying it will quickly see if it's worthwhile to even keep negotiating.

At Monday's talks in Geneva, Russia insisted on guarantees precluding NATO's expansion to Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations and demanded to roll back the military alliance's deployments in Eastern Europe. The U.S. firmly rejected the demands as a nonstarter.

The Beijing Winter Olympics are fraught with potential hazards for major sponsors, who are trying to remain quiet about China's human rights record while protecting at least $1 billion they've collectively paid to the IOC.

That could reach $2 billion when new figures are expected this year. Sponsors include big household names like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Visa, Toyota, Airbnb, and Panasonic.

In a medical first, doctors transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life and a Maryland hospital said Monday that he's doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery.

While it's too soon to know if the operation really will work, it marks a step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center say the transplant showed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.

Gruyere cheese does not have to come from the Gruyere region of Europe to be sold under the gruyere name, a federal judge has ruled.

A consortium of Swiss and French cheesemakers from the region around the town of Gruyeres, Switzerland, sued in U.S. District Court in Virginia after the federal Trademark Trials and Appeals Board denied an application for trademark protections.

It's only the size of a shoebox, carved with the broken-off foot of an ancient Greek goddess.

But Greece hopes the 2,500-year-old marble fragment, which has arrived on loan from an Italian museum, may help resolve one of the world's thorniest cultural heritage disputes and lead to the reunification in Athens of all surviving Parthenon Sculptures — many of which are in the British Museum.