A facility housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria came under attack late Sunday when rockets were fired from nearby areas, an opposition war monitor, state media and a spokesman for U.S.-backed fighters said, though the U.S. military denied there was any attack.

"There is no truth to the reports that U.S. forces in Syria were attacked by rockets today," tweeted coalition spokesman Col. Wayne Marotto.

In a village in Lebanon's scenic Chouf Mountains, 69-year-old Chafik Mershad pulls out a massive rectangular guestbook and reads out despairingly the date when he hosted his last visitor: Nov. 16, 2019.

A month earlier, anti-government protests had exploded across the country over taxes and a deteriorating currency crisis. Amid such uncertainty, few people visited his guesthouse. Then came the coronavirus and subsequent government-imposed lockdowns. The guesthouse officially closed its doors in February 2020. A year and a half later, he still has no plans to reopen amid the country's current financial meltdown.

An Israeli court on Sunday sentenced a Palestinian woman from east Jerusalem to 30 months in prison, probation and a fine after she acknowledged aiding Lebanon's Hizbullah over several years.

As part of a plea bargain, Yasmine Jaber was convicted after she admitted to charges of association with a foreign agent, membership in a "terrorist" organization and other "terror"-related charges.

Egypt's president has inaugurated a new naval base on the Mediterranean Sea, the latest example of the government's military build-up.

The base is meant to "secure the country's northern and western front… and the maritime shipping routes," according to a statement by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's office.

Cyprus search crews discovered the bodies of four people outside a fire-swept mountain village on Sunday in what a government minister called the "most destructive" blaze in the east Mediterranean island nation's history.

Nicos Nouris said that Civil Defense volunteers discovered the remains just outside the village of Odou on the southern edge of the Troodos mountain range.

Former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil and ex-public works minister Ghazi Zoaiter have issued a joint statement saying they are ready to be questioned by lead investigative judge Tarek al-Bitar in the Beirut port blast probe.

Noting that they heard about the judge’s request to question them through the media, Khalil and Zoaiter said that they are both ready to appear before Bitar even before a permission is issued by parliament to have their immunity lifted.

The seven justices who reversed Bill Cosby's conviction this week spent months debating whether he had a secret agreement with a prosecutor that tainted his 2018 criminal sexual assault conviction.

In the end, Pennsylvania's highest court ruled that a district attorney had induced Cosby to give incriminating testimony in 2005 for a lawsuit, with the promise that no criminal charges would be filed. Then, a decade later, another prosecutor used it against him — a fundamental violation of his Fifth Amendment rights. "America's Dad" walked out of prison Wednesday and won't face any further trials in the case.

The Lebanese judge leading the investigation into last year's massive explosion at Beirut's port announced Friday he intends to pursue senior politicians and former and current security chiefs in the case, and requested permission for their prosecution, state media reported.

The move -- two days before the 11-month anniversary of the horrific blast -- was praised by families of the victims and survivors as a bold step by Bitar, whose predecessor was removed following legal challenges by two former ministers he had accused of negligence that led to the explosion.

The trial in Tokyo of two Americans charged with helping Nissan's former chairman, Carlos Ghosn, flee Japan wrapped up Friday with prosecutors seeking prison terms of more than two years for each of them.

The Americans, former Green Beret Michael Taylor and his son Peter Taylor, were arrested in Massachusetts last year and extradited in March. They acknowledged guilt when their trial opened last month and have apologized for their alleged roles in Ghosn's escape.

Russia's domestic security agency said Thursday it has discovered a plot by followers of the Islamic State group to conduct terror attacks in Moscow and southern Russia, and killed one suspected conspirator.

The Federal Security Service, the main KGB successor agency known by its Russian acronym FSB, said that two Russian nationals were plotting the attacks with firearms and knives in crowded areas in Moscow and the southern city of Astrakhan under the IS leaders' guidance.