Former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn wired more than $860,000 to a company linked to one of the men accused of helping smuggle him out of Japan in a box last year, U.S. prosecutors said in a new court filing.

The lines snaked around the block. Then they swelled to fill the whole street, before they turned into a raucous mob of men shoving to the front of the line. There at the exchange bureau, they could buy rationed dollars, the hottest commodity in Lebanon.

The small country's financial meltdown has thrown Lebanese into a frantic search for dollars as their local currency's value evaporates. To get the precious hard currency, they must navigate labyrinthine regulations, exploiting any loopholes they can to rescue their earnings.

A Lebanese businessman serving a five-year sentence in the United States for allegedly providing millions of dollars to Hizbullah arrived Wednesday in Beirut after his early release, local media reported.

Kassim Tajideen was sentenced last year in a federal court in Washington for his alleged role in a money laundering conspiracy aimed at evading U.S. sanctions. He was arrested in Morocco and extradited to the U.S. in 2017, where he was he was charged with laundering money for Hizbullah.

Lebanese are buying candles in bulk, turning to traditional kerosene lamps and throwing away rotten food because of prolonged power cuts that plunged the country into darkness this week, adding to the gloom of a deepening economic crisis.

The country's electricity company and the powerful operators of generators had been rationing power since late June as fuel supplies dwindle amid uncertainty over the next shipment.

It's hard to say what exactly will change in the West Bank if Israel follows through on its plans to annex parts of the occupied territory, but east Jerusalem, which was annexed more than a half-century ago, may provide some answers.

Israeli leaders paint Jerusalem as a model of coexistence, the "unified, eternal" capital of the Jewish people, where minorities have equal rights. But Palestinian residents face widespread discrimination, most lack citizenship and many live in fear of being forced out.

Lebanon's Hizbullah and the Palestinian Hamas on Monday said Israel's plan to annex parts of the West Bank is an "aggression against the Palestinian people" and called for unity to confront it.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh sent a letter to Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in which he said that the Palestinian cause is facing "grave dangers," according to a statement released by the Lebanese group.

Israel said it successfully launched a new spy satellite into space on Monday as its leaders hinted it was behind a massive fire at an Iranian nuclear site last week -- potentially ratcheting up a long-running covert war.

If Israel was responsible for the fire at the heavily fortified Natanz facility, it would mark another in a series of daring strikes against Iran's nuclear program attributed to Israel, while also risking Iranian retaliation on either Israeli or Western targets.

Lebanon on Sunday hosted its annual music festival in the ancient northeastern city of Baalbek without an audience for the first time, a move organizers dubbed "an act of cultural resilience" to the coronavirus pandemic as well as the country's unprecedented economic meltdown.

Held amid soaring Roman columns, the Baalbek International Festival was founded in 1956. This year, it's being broadcast on local and regional TV stations and livestreamed on social media in an effort to spread "unity and hope."

Intelligence that Afghan militants might have accepted Russian bounties for killing American troops did not scuttle the U.S.-Taliban agreement or President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw thousands more troops from the war.

It did give critics of the deal another reason to say the Taliban shouldn't be trusted.

Heavy rain in southern Japan triggered flooding and mudslides on Saturday, leaving more than a dozen people presumed dead, about 10 missing and dozens stranded on rooftops waiting to be rescued, officials said.

More than 75,000 residents in the prefectures of Kumamoto and Kagoshima were urged to evacuate following pounding rains overnight. The evacuation was not mandatory and it was not known how many actually fled.