A year after uncovering a network of cross-border Hizbullah tunnels, the Israeli military said Thursday that the Lebanese Iran-backed group has beefed up its presence along the volatile frontier.

Israeli military officials said that neither the destruction of the tunnels, nor the current political crisis in Lebanon, have weakened the group's desire to prepare for renewed conflict with Israel.

Amer Fakhoury -- a Lebanese-American man jailed in Lebanon since September over collaboration with Israel accusations -- is very ill, and if he dies there, then Lebanon should be subject to sanctions, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has said.

Shaheen, who was addressing a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, said Fakhoury has been “illegally” detained since Sept. 12. The 57-year-old Fakhoury, who owns a restaurant in Dover, New Hampshire, went to visit family in Lebanon on vacation -- his first trip back in nearly 20 years.

People who fled Syria in recent years are often viewed as war refugees because of the violence that has engulfed much of the country since 2011.

But those from the northern and northeastern parts of Syria may more accurately be viewed as climate refugees, fleeing not a worsening conflict but an increasingly severe drought.

Suicide deaths are rising in Lebanon as the country grapples with an unprecedented economic crisis raising suicide deaths to three on Thursday.

Officials in Libya's U.N.-supported government say they plan to confront Moscow over the alleged deployment of Russian mercenaries fighting alongside their opponents in the country's civil war.

Libyan and U.S. officials accuse Russia of deploying fighters through a private security contractor, the Wagner Group, to key battleground areas in Libya in the past months.

France's vaunted high-speed trains stood still Thursday, schools across the country shut down and the Eiffel Tower warned visitors to stay away as unions held nationwide strikes and protests over the government's plan to overhaul the retirement system.

Paris deployed 6,000 police for what's expected to be a major demonstration through the capital, an outpouring of anger at President Emmanuel Macron for a reform seen as threatening the hard-fought French way of life.

In a stark reflection of the deepening economic crisis in Lebanon, a man in his 40s shot himself to death Wednesday with a bird rifle when he became despondent over salary cuts in recent weeks, according to his family.

Lebanon's central bank on Wednesday dramatically lowered interest rates on dollar and Lebanese pound deposits and loans -- the latest measure to shore up the country's banking system amid a burgeoning economic crisis.

Banque de Liban also announced that for the next six months it would pay 50% of the interest it owes banks on dollar deposits and deposit certificates in Lebanese pounds -- a move that would also ease the demand on the dollar.

Hundreds of Syrian refugees have headed home in the first batch to leave Lebanon since protests broke out in the small Arab country more than a month ago.

Since the early hours of Tuesday, scores of Syrians boarded buses in several locations in Lebanon before heading back to their hometowns in war-torn Syria.

At least 208 people in Iran have been killed amid protests over sharply rising gasoline prices and a subsequent crackdown by security forces, Amnesty International said Monday, as one government official acknowledged telling police to shoot demonstrators.

Iran has yet to release any nationwide statistics over the unrest that gripped the Islamic Republic beginning Nov. 15 with minimum prices for government-subsidized gasoline rising by 50%. Iran's mission to the United Nations disputed Amnesty's findings early Tuesday, though it offered no evidence to support its claim.