Death stalks the corridors of Beirut's Rafik Hariri University Hospital, where losing multiple patients in one day to COVID-19 has become the new normal. On Friday, the mood among the staff was even more solemn as a young woman lost the battle with the virus.

There was silence as the woman, barely in her 30s, drew her last breath. Then a brief commotion. The nurses frantically tried to resuscitate her. Finally, exhausted, they silently removed the oxygen mask and the tubes — and covered the body with a brown blanket.

Israeli warplanes flew over Lebanon and fired several missiles into central Syria early Friday, Syrian state media reported, without giving word on casualties.

Iran's capital and major cities plunged into darkness in recent weeks as rolling outages left millions without electricity for hours. Traffic lights died. Offices went dark. Online classes stopped.

With toxic smog blanketing Tehran skies and the country buckling under the pandemic and other mounting crises, social media has been rife with speculation. Soon, fingers pointed at an unlikely culprit: Bitcoin.

Four civilians, including two children, were killed by Israeli strikes on the Syrian province of Hama at dawn on Friday, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5 shook Cyprus on Thursday, frightening some people who fled from their homes. No injuries or damage was reported.

The temblor struck at 4:27 p.m. (1427 GMT or 9:27 a.m. EST), Cyprus' Geological Survey said, and was felt across the island. Its epicenter was in Cyprus' southeastern corner at a depth of 55 kilometers (34 miles). The quake was also felt in neighboring Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Turkey.

The governor of Lebanon's Central Bank denied on Thursday that he had made any transfers of the bank's funds following a probe by Swiss authorities into money laundering and embezzlement.

Gov. Riad Salameh's statement was released after he was questioned by Lebanon's prosecutor general, Judge Ghassan Oueidat, based on a Swiss investigation for aggravated money laundering in connection with possible embezzlement in the bank.

The government of Dubai on Wednesday ordered all hospitals to cancel nonessential surgeries for the next month as coronavirus infections surge to unprecedented heights in the United Arab Emirates.

In a circular sent to government-run and private health centers across the emirate, Dubai's Health Authority announced that starting Thursday medical operations "may be allowed to continue only per medical urgency" as the city tries to keep its hospitals from becoming overrun.

Turkish prosecutors on Wednesday sought the maximum possible 12 years in prison each for a Turkish private airline official and two pilots accused of smuggling the former Nissan Motor Co. chairman out of Japan, Turkey's state news agency reported.

In the third hearing in the trial of seven people over Carlos Ghosn's dramatic escape in 2019, prosecutors also requested that the court acquits two other pilots of the charge of "illegally smuggling a migrant," Anadolu Agency said. They recommended instead that the two - who flew him from Istanbul to Beirut -- be tried on charges of failing to report a crime.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has spent much of his long career casting Israel's Arab minority as a potential fifth column led by terrorist sympathizers, is now openly courting their support as he seeks reelection in the country's fourth vote in less than two years.

Few Arabs are likely to heed his call, underscoring the desperation of Netanyahu's political somersault. But the relative absence of incitement against the community in this campaign and the potential breakup of an Arab party alliance could dampen turnout — to Netanyahu's advantage. He might even pick up just enough votes to swing a tight election.

The European Union's top officials breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday that Joe Biden will be taking over as president of the United States, but they warned that the world has changed after four years of Donald Trump and that trans-Atlantic ties will be different in the future.

"This new dawn in America is the moment we've been awaiting for so long," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, hailing Biden's arrival as "resounding proof that, once again after four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House."