With the number of endangered orcas that frequent the inland waters of Washington state at a 30-year low, Gov. Jay Inslee on Wednesday directed state agencies to take immediate and longer-term steps to protect the struggling killer whales.

The fish-eating mammals that spend time in Puget Sound have struggled for years with a lack of food, pollution, noise and disturbances from boat traffic. There are now just 76 of the orcas, down from 98 in 1995.

It was a few days before the one-year anniversary of U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration and a Lebanese-American businessman was on his way to Mar-a-Lago.

George Nader, an international fixer whose long history included intrepid back-channel mediation between Israel and Arab countries — and a 15-year-old pedophilia conviction in Europe that has not been previously reported — was transiting through Dulles International Airport outside Washington.

For the first time since its meteoric rise in 2012 amid the chaos of war, al-Qaida's branch in Syria is in retreat, battling rival militant groups in the north and fighting for survival in a key foothold near the capital, Damascus.

Over the past three weeks, the extremist group has been driven from nearly all of the northern province of Aleppo, losing dozens of fighters in battles there and in nearby Idlib province.

The daily commute from Mexico to California farms is the same as it was before Donald Trump became president. Hundreds of Mexicans cross the border and line the sidewalks of Calexico's tiny downtown by 4 a.m., napping on cardboard sheets and blankets or sipping coffee from a 24-hour doughnut shop until buses leave for the fields.

For decades, cross-border commuters have picked lettuce, carrots, broccoli, onions, cauliflower and other vegetables that make California's Imperial Valley "America's Salad Bowl" from December through March. As Trump visits the border Tuesday, the harvest is a reminder of how little has changed despite heated rhetoric in Washington.

The day China's ruling Communist Party unveiled a proposal to allow President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely as Mao Zedong did a generation ago, Ma Bo was so shaken he couldn't sleep.

So Ma, a renowned writer, wrote a social media post urging the party to remember the history of unchecked one-man rule that ended in catastrophe.

From their home, a tent hastily erected in a grassy field, the young Muslim Rohingya couple can see the village they left behind last year, fleeing attacks by Buddhist mobs and Myanmar security forces.

They arrived in a no man's land, one of the small, ill-defined areas that exist at the cloudiest edges of the borderlands, places that seem to be neither Myanmar nor Bangladesh. While nearly every other Rohingya refugee who crossed the border has sought protection in the immense camps a few miles deeper into Bangladesh, these people say they will go no farther.

If war breaks out in the Middle East, U.S. and Israeli forces are preparing to one day fight alongside one another to defend Israel against missile attacks from across the region.

Nearly 5,000 Israeli and American troops have been training together in Israel for that very scenario. The "Juniper Cobra" exercise includes field training, computer simulations and live-fire drills of sophisticated missile-defense systems.

The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee said Thursday that he wants to question a Lebanese-American businessman who is cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The family of an elderly Lebanese man is suing a Michigan nursing home, alleging a hidden camera captured footage of the abuse and some caretakers directed ethnic slurs toward the man.

Hussein Younes, 89, was seeking care at Autumnwood of Livonia in 2015 after a bowel obstruction surgery. His son, Salim Younes, grew concerned after noticing his father had several bruises, cuts and significant weight loss.

Viola Davis is good in a pinch.

Last year's best supporting actress Oscar-winner was sipping champagne at the annual Women in Film pre-Oscar cocktail event Friday night when the organization's president, Cathy Schulman, herself an Oscar-winner for "Crash," asked Davis if she could give a few remarks.