The body of Monsignor Hilarion Capucci, the former Greek Melkite Catholic archbishop in Jerusalem who was exiled to the Vatican for his pro-Palestinian activism, has arrived in Lebanon where he will be buried.

A native of Aleppo, Syria, Capucci died in Rome on Jan. 1 at the age of 94. A funeral is expected Monday.

The Lebanese American FBI agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein alone for months after the former Iraqi leader's capture is now leading the investigation into the Florida airport shooting rampage blamed on an Iraq war veteran.

Stung by years of failure to stop Syria's bloodshed, the United States is now but a bystander to the civil war as President Barack Obama leaves office.

Secretary of State John Kerry still is speaking sporadically with Russian, Turkish and Arab foreign ministers about cease-fire efforts, and there are occasional consultations with the opposition. But less than two weeks before Donald Trump's presidency begins, the outgoing administration is no longer even claiming to play the leading part in the peace mediation that it spearheaded unsuccessfully for years. Formal contacts with Russia and others in Geneva, the main meeting point for the U.S.-led diplomacy, have ended.

The chilly December wind whipped rain across the strewn wreckage of a city that, nearly 3,000 years ago, ruled almost the entire Middle East. Rivulets of water ran through the dirt, washing away chunks of ancient stone.

The city of Nimrud in northern Iraq is in pieces, victim of the Islamic State group's fervor to erase history. The remains of its palaces and temples, once lined in brilliant reliefs of gods and kings, have been blown up. The statues of winged bulls that once guarded the site are hacked to bits. Its towering ziggurat, or step pyramid, has been bulldozed.

Police say a train has crushed two motorized rickshaws on an ungated crossing, killing seven schoolchildren in central Pakistan.

Police officer Javed Ahmed says the rickshaw drivers apparently misjudged the speed of the coming train due to heavy fog while attempting to cross the tracks early Friday morning near the town of Lodhran. The train was heading to Karachi from the eastern city of Lahore.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials face questions at a Senate hearing that will be dominated by the intelligence community's assessment that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Donald Trump win.

The Armed Services Committee's cyber threats hearing on Thursday comes a day before the president-elect is to be briefed by the CIA and FBI directors — along with the director of national intelligence — on the investigation into Russia's alleged hacking efforts. Trump has been deeply critical of their findings, even appearing to back controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's contention that Russia did not provide him with hacked Democratic emails.

South Korea is accelerating plans to create a special military unit tasked with decapitating North Korea's leadership in the event of war as it looks for options to counter its rival's nuclear weapons and missiles.

An official from Seoul's Defense Ministry said Thursday that the brigade, which will aim to remove the North's wartime command and paralyze its function if war breaks out, will be launched this year. The unit was originally planned to be ready by 2019.

The leader of the United Arab Emirates, who has rarely been seen since suffering a stroke nearly three years ago, has left his country for a "private visit" abroad.

The state-run WAM news agency announced Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan's trip on Thursday. It did not say where he went.

Morocco has become the latest Muslim-majority country to authorize Islamic banks, amid growing market demand for Sharia-compliant banking.

The Moroccan central bank announced this week it has approved five Islamic banks, fulfilling a long-standing promise of the Islamist party leading a coalition government since 2011.

The family of an Iraqi female journalist kidnapped in Baghdad last week says she has been released.

Nibras Shawqi al-Qaisi told The Associated Press on Wednesday that her sister, Afrah, was released the night before, without providing further details.