Lewis Hamilton entered Yas Marina Circuit chasing history Thursday dressed head-to-toe in purple with a graffiti-styled expletive scrawled across the back of his sweater.

Asked if he was sending a message, the seven-time champion claimed he was unaware what it said until he was getting dressed. Pure coincidence, Hamilton said, but it sure looked as if he was ready for the finale of his title fight with Max Verstappen.

Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent Saudi political activist who pushed to end a ban on women driving in her country, is suing three former U.S. intelligence and military officials she says helped hack her cellphone so a foreign government could spy on her before she was imprisoned and tortured.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation announced Thursday that it had filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court on al-Hathloul's behalf against former U.S. officials Marc Baier, Ryan Adams and Daniel Gericke, as well as a cybersecurity company called DarkMatter that has contracted with the United Arab Emirates.

The al-Qaida extremist group has grown slightly inside Afghanistan since U.S. forces left in late August, and the country's new Taliban leaders are divided over whether to fulfill their 2020 pledge to break ties with the group, the top U.S. commander in the region said.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the departure of U.S. military and intelligence assets from Afghanistan has made it much harder to track al-Qaida and other extremist groups inside Afghanistan.

The Jordanian health ministry has announced it had identified its first two cases of the omicron variant of coronavirus.

The health ministry's statement, announced by state-run Petra news agency, said the first case is a Jordanian national who recently returned from South Africa and is currently quarantining in a hotel in Jordan's capital, Amman.

A year after being released from an Israeli prison following a 103-day hunger strike, Maher al-Akhras is barely able to walk. Frequent bouts of dizziness and sensitivity to noise mean he can neither enjoy social occasions nor return to work on his ancestral farm in the occupied West Bank.

Back home, he is seen as a hero of the Palestinian cause, one of a small group of hunger strikers who have secured release from Israeli detention. But the mental and physical damage from the prolonged hunger strike has left him and others like him unable to resume normal lives, and reliant on long-term medical care.

Ziad Hilweh knew his family might die on the way. But the risk was worth it, he said, to reach the shores of Europe for a new start with his wife and three kids, away from the daily humiliation of life in Lebanon.

The country's economic meltdown had destroyed him. The currency crash meant that the value of his salary from working at a private security company fell from $650 a month to about $50 after the Lebanese pound lost more than 90% of its value in less than two years. It reached the point the 22-year-old could no longer afford milk and diapers for his children.

The top U.S. commander for the Middle East has said that the United States will keep the current 2,500 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future, and he warned that he expects increasing attacks on U.S. and Iraqi personnel by Iranian-backed militias determined to get American forces out.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Pentagon that despite the shift by U.S. forces to a non-combat role in Iraq, they will still provide air support and other military aid for Iraq's fight against the Islamic State.

Former President Donald Trump lashed out with profanity at Benjamin Netanyahu for congratulating President Joe Biden on his victory in last year's election, an Israeli newspaper reported Friday.

Trump accused the former Israeli leader of disloyalty, saying he had helped Netanyahu in his own elections by reversing decades of U.S. policy and supporting Israel's claims to territory seized in war. Trump is still falsely claiming the U.S. election was stolen from him.

Syria will host an Arab energy conference in 2024, the country's energy ministry said Thursday, the latest sign that Arab countries are moving to re-engage with the government of Syria's embattled President Bashar Assad.

The announcement followed a unanimous vote from members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries during a virtual meeting Thursday, the ministry said. The conference will be held in Damascus, according to a ministry statement on Facebook and the official state news agency SANA. Qatar is hosting the 2023 conference.

Atlético Madrid has a chance rekindle its bid to win a second straight Spanish league title.

Real Madrid is already 10 points ahead at the top of the standings before the midway point of the season, while fourth-place Atlético has struggled to keep in touch behind both Sevilla and a surprising Real Betis.