In northern Syria, residents are bracing for a new fight. With the world's attention focused on the war in Ukraine, Turkey's leader says he's planning a major military operation to push back Syrian Kurdish fighters and create a long sought-after buffer zone in the border area.

Tensions are high. Hardly a day passes by without an exchange of fire and shelling between the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters, and Turkish forces and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition gunmen.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers stood guard in the occupied West Bank town of Huwara, where the Palestinian flag was blowing in the warm breeze from an electricity pole.

Suddenly, a Jewish settler jumped from a car, hoisted himself up the pole and tore down the flag, to the fury of Palestinian onlookers. 

For many Libyans, clashes that erupted in the capital of Tripoli last month were all too familiar — a deja vu of street fighting, reverberating gunfire and people cowering inside their homes. A video circulated online on the day, showing a man shouting from a mosque loudspeaker "Enough war, we want our young generation!"

The fighting underscored the fragility of Libya's relative peace that has prevailed for more than a year but it also looked like history was repeating itself. Now, observers say that momentum to reunify the country has been lost and that its future is looking grim.

Skillfully riding decades of turbulence and shifting political tides, Nabih Berri is returning for a seventh consecutive term as speaker of Lebanon's parliament, despite growing popular demands for fresh faces.

At 84, he is one of the world's longest serving legislative chiefs, having held his post for the past 30 years, a feat no other Lebanese politician has accomplished.

Ramy Finge spent two years braving tear gas and rubber bullets, sometimes trying to scale the cement walls surrounding Lebanon's parliament during anti-government protests.

Soon he'll be able to walk in through the front door. The dentist from the northern city of Tripoli is among 13 independent newcomers who won seats in parliament in May 15 elections, building on the protest movement seeking to break the long domination by traditional parties.

Fearing visa hassles could cost him his job in Dubai while an economic collapse had dashed any homecoming options, Lebanese executive Jad splurged around $135,000 on a new citizenship for himself and his wife.

When Firas Hamdan was injured at a protest near Lebanon's parliament two years ago, the then activist never imagined he would one day return as a lawmaker.

Hamdan, one of 13 independent politicians who emerged from a mass anti-government protest movement in 2019, made it to parliament on a reformist platform at elections on Sunday.

Coming from around the globe, airplanes carrying world leaders have landed in the capital of the United Arab Emirates to offer condolences for the death of the country's president — and acknowledge the influence of the man now fully in charge.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan rarely speaks publicly. The new president shies away from the United Nations' annual summit in New York. And his thoughts on the world around him come filtered through a tight-knit coterie and leaders who interact with him rather than from his pronouncements.

Hizbullah's opponents might rejoice at their loss of majority in parliament but Lebanon's packed political calendar now sets the stage for protracted deadlocks at best or violence at worst.

Lebanese voted for a new parliament Sunday against the backdrop of an economic meltdown that is transforming the country and low expectations that the election would significantly alter the political landscape.

A new crop of candidates from the 2019 protest movement are running against the country's entrenched ruling class that is blamed for the collapse, hoping to unseat them. But they are divided and lack the money, experience and other advantages held by traditional political rulers.