A Lebanese-born man has died after being shot in Berlin, German police said.

There was no immediate word on who was responsible.

An Egyptian court has approved an appeal by a Lebanese woman who was sentenced to eight years in prison over insulting Egyptians in a video she posted online and handed her a suspended one-year sentence.

The Heliopolis Appeals court on Sunday fined Mona el-Mazbouh 10,700 Egyptian pounds (around $598) and ordered her deportation.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has snapped a dusty but cool selfie.

NASA released the panorama this week. A thin layer of dust is visible on Curiosity , the result of a storm that enveloped Mars this summer. The darkish sky indicates dust still clogging the atmosphere in August, when the panorama was shot by Curiosity's mast camera. The rover had just drilled for a new rock sample.

The New York Times is reporting that Jack Ma, the co-founder and executive chairman of Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group, is retiring.

The Times said that in an interview, Ma said he planned to step down as executive chairman on Monday to pursue philanthropy in education. He will remain on Alibaba's board of directors.

The leaders of Russia, Turkey and Iran on Friday discussed a step-by-step "stabilization" in Syria's Idlib, with a possibility of peace with some rebel groups, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the talks.

Standing in line in the courtyard of their school in the capital Damascus, scores of Syrian girls in pink and blue uniforms saluted the flag and sang the country's national anthem. A few miles away in a suburb, children played in the courtyard of a rehabilitated school, where shattered windows were replaced but charred walls and pockmarks from bullets remained on the building facades.

With fewer areas in active combat in Syria, more children are going back to school this year, the Syrian government said, putting the number at 4 million.

The Trump administration is now pledging the U.S. will remain in Syria until the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State group, a move that could signal open-ended American involvement in the war-torn country.

The announcement "means we're not in a hurry to pull out," the U.S. special representative for Syria, James Jeffrey, told journalists in Washington Thursday, although he added that didn't necessarily mean a long-term American military presence in the country.

Israel is building a massive wall along its northern border, saying the barrier is needed to protect civilians from Hizbullah attacks, but the project has raised tensions with Lebanon, which fears the fence will encroach on its territory.

The Israeli military insists the entire barrier is being constructed in Israeli territory, and the U.N. peacekeeping force in the area agrees. But Hizbullah has never fully accepted the border, and a senior Israeli military official stressed the need for the wall, saying that while Israeli intelligence closely monitors the group, "we are prepared for the possibility that they will surprise us."

Israeli jets flying high over Lebanon struck at targets inside Syria on Tuesday, Syrian state media reported, in a rare daytime raid that killed at least one person.

Syria's SANA state news agency said the country's air defenses shot down five missiles, adding that one person was killed and 12 others were wounded.

Hundreds of Syrian refugees returned to their homeland early on Tuesday, the latest group to return to Syria from its western neighbor, the National News Agency reported.