Qatar's ruling emir met German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday on his first trip abroad since a diplomatic crisis erupted between the tiny Gulf nation and its neighbors, and the German leader voiced "great concern" that no end to the conflict is in sight.

Merkel, addressing reporters alongside the emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, said she hoped dialogue could lead to "fair compromises."

A man believed to be an American citizen who was fighting with Islamic State militants has surrendered in Syria and is now in U.S. custody, raising questions about how the Trump administration will deal with such detainee cases.

Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway, a Pentagon spokesman, said the man surrendered to Syrian Democratic forces around Tuesday and was turned over to U.S. military force in Syria. Rankine-Galloway said the man is being legally detained as a known enemy combatant.

Qatar's ruling emir is on his first trip abroad since a diplomatic crisis erupted in June between his nation and four Arab countries.

Here's a look at the ongoing crisis, the worst to grip the region since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Syria's civil war has been one of the modern world's most brutal conflicts and one of its most heavily filmed. Hundreds of thousands of amateur videos uploaded to YouTube document every heartbeat of the war over the past seven years, from momentous events like cities under bombardment to intimate scenes like a father cradling his dead children.

Syrian activists fear all that history could be erased as YouTube moves to rein in violent content. In the past few months, the online video giant has implemented new policies to remove material considered graphic or supporting terrorism, and hundreds of thousands of videos from the conflict suddenly disappeared without notice. Activists say crucial evidence of human rights violations risks being lost — as well as an outlet to the world that is crucial for them.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri held talks Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Russian presidency's summer headquarters in Sochi.

As North Korea flaunts its new nuclear muscle, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is spotlighting the overwhelming numerical superiority of America's doomsday arsenal.

On Wednesday he is dropping in on ground zero of American nuclear firepower: Minot Air Force base in North Dakota, home to more than 100 land-based nuclear missiles as well as nuclear bomb-toting aircraft. He also will receive briefings at Strategic Command, whose top officer would command nuclear forces in war.

Nearing the end of a sweeping visit to assess the devastation wrought by Hurricane Irma, French President Emmanuel Macron has promised to rebuild the wrecked island of St. Martin and diversify its economy away from tourism.

In further responses to complaints that his government didn't do enough to handle Irma's wrath, Macron also promised to evacuate residents of his country's Caribbean territories and provide services and shelter for those who choose to stay.

"Aleppo is in my eyes," says a billboard depicting President Bashar Assad looking out over two men and a boy repaving the main Saadallah al-Jabiri Square — once a front line in one of the deadliest episodes of the Syrian civil war.

The recapture of eastern Aleppo in December 2016 was a landmark victory for Assad's forces in the conflict, now in its seventh year, but it left the area in ruins.

The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to maintain its restrictive policy on refugees.

The justices on Tuesday agreed to an administration request to block a lower court ruling that would have eased the refugee ban and allowed up to 24,000 refugees to enter the country before the end of October.

Israeli banks are contributing to the proliferation of West Bank settlements by providing loans and mortgages for construction there, violating their human rights obligations, Human Rights Watch said in a report Wednesday.

The report said that Israeli law does not require banks to provide such services to the settlements, and urged them to distance themselves from such activities. It also urged the banks' shareholders to "ensure that their business relationships do not contribute to or benefit from" human rights violations.