Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Sunday that the Western strikes against Syria following alleged use of chemical weapons will likely complicate prospects of a political solution and have failed to achieve any of their results.

Israel's military said Friday that an unmanned Iranian aircraft shot down in February after infiltrating Israeli airspace was armed with explosives and on a mission to attack Israel.

It said Friday that following an "operational and intelligence-based investigation" the military concludes that the "Iranian aircraft was armed with explosives and was tasked to attack Israeli territory."

Israel's strike on a Syrian airbase this week has put it in direct confrontation with regional foe Iran, Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Friday. 

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced Thursday that his country wants to avoid an “out of control” situation in the event of any military strike on Syria over the suspected Douma chemical attack.

At a congressional hearing on the Pentagon's 2019 budget request, Mattis declined to discuss military plans but said legislative leaders would be notified before any attack was undertaken. He said that because the U.S. had no one at the site of the suspected chemical attack last Saturday, the U.S. has no hard evidence of what happened. But he said he personally believes it was an "inexcusable" use of chemical weapons.

Polls have opened in an early presidential election in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.

Voting began Wednesday in the oil-rich Caspian Sea nation where incumbent Ilham Aliyev is expected to win by a landslide, extending his 15-year-long rule.

Under fire for the worst privacy debacle in his company's history, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg batted away often-aggressive questioning from lawmakers who accused him of failing to protect the personal information of millions of Americans from Russians intent on upsetting the U.S. election.

During some five hours of Senate questioning Tuesday, Zuckerberg apologized several times for Facebook failures, disclosed that his company was "working with" special counsel Robert Mueller in the federal probe of Russian election interference and said it was working hard to change its own operations after the harvesting of users' private data by a data-mining company affiliated with Donald Trump's campaign.

The deployment of National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border at President Donald Trump's request was underway Tuesday with a gradual ramp-up of troops under orders to help curb illegal immigration.

The Trump administration also announced that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will visit this week a stretch of new border wall breaking ground in New Mexico, putting additional focus on what Trump has called a crisis of migrant crossings and crime.

A senior Russian lawmaker says Moscow is willing to help arrange a visit this week for experts from the international chemical weapons watchdog to the site of a suspected poison gas attack in Syria.

Syrian opposition activists say 40 people died in Saturday night's chemical attack in the town of Douma, the last remaining rebel bastion near Damascus. The opposition blamed President Bashar Assad's forces for the attack, accusations the government strongly denies.

Government and other scientists are proposing a new way to define Alzheimer's disease — basing it on biological signs, such as brain changes, rather than memory loss and other symptoms of dementia that are used today.

A 4.7-magnitude quake has hit an area of central Italy near Macerata which was struck by a series of powerful quakes in 2016. No deaths or injuries have been reported.

Mayors in towns affected are reporting some damage from the temblor, which struck around dawn, and said that checks were under way. Schools in many towns have been closed for the day, as was a local train line.