Recent deadly attacks by Palestinians have shown a shift in the dynamics of militancy in the West Bank, as armed factions play less of a role and individual grievances trump ideology, analysts say.

At a bustling market in the Palestinian political headquarters of Ramallah, customers clamor to get their hands on the latest hot trend. 

With its ground troops forced to pull back in Ukraine and regroup, and its Black Sea flagship sunk, Russia's military failings are mounting. No country is paying closer attention than China to how a smaller and outgunned force has badly bloodied what was thought to be one of the world's most powerful armies.

China, like Russia, has been ambitiously reforming its Soviet-style military and experts say leader Xi Jinping will be carefully parsing the weaknesses exposed by the invasion of Ukraine as they might apply to his own People's Liberation Army and his designs on the self-governed island of Taiwan.

Churches in Jerusalem are up in arms against Jewish "radicals" who are settling in the Christian Quarter and threatening a fragile religious balance in the ancient Holy City.

"We have a major problem here," said Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilus III in Jerusalem's Old City, which is split into historic Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Armenian quarters.

During its 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran embraced the protest cry of "neither East nor West," rejecting both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, then locked in the Cold War. The phrase to this day hangs over the doors of Iran's Foreign Ministry.

Russia's war on Ukraine, however, has exposed just how much Tehran has tilted toward Moscow in recent years as the collapse of its nuclear deal with world powers stoked decades-old, hard-line anger at America. Members of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard train on Russian surface-to-air missile systems and aircraft. Hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin on one of his first trips abroad.

During a visit to Syria in 2017, Vladimir Putin lavished praise on a Syrian general whose division played an instrumental role in defeating insurgents in the country's long-running civil war. The Russian president told him his cooperation with Russian troops "will lead to great successes in the future."

Now members of Brig. Gen. Suheil al-Hassan's division are among hundreds of Russian-trained Syrian fighters who have reportedly signed up to fight alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, including Syrian soldiers, former rebels and experienced fighters who fought for years against the Islamic State group in Syria's desert.

In a "tunnel city" under the sandy soils of southern Gaza, Palestinian militants are preparing for the next conflict with Israel, as tensions in Jerusalem threaten to escalate.

The coffin was made from pieces of a closet. In a darkened basement under a building shaking from the bombardment of war, there were few other options.

Six-year-old Vlad watched as his mother was carried out of the shelter last month and to the yard of a nearby home. The burial was hurried and devastating.

The thought of an extreme-right leader standing at the helm of the European Union would be abhorrent to most in the 27-nation bloc. But if Emmanuel Macron falters in the April 24 French presidential elections, it might be two weeks away.

Experts say a win for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen would have immense repercussions on the functioning of the EU. Not only would her coming to power damage the democratic values and commercial rules of the 27-nation bloc, but it would also threaten the EU's common front and sanctions that have been built in response to Russia's war in Ukraine.

Economic and financial experts have reiterated doubts over the willingness of Lebanon's political elite, widely blamed for endemic corruption, to implement the reforms requested by the International Monetary Fund to resuscitate the economy, shortly after Lebanon and the IMF reached a tentative deal.

A former vice governor of Lebanon's central bank, Nasser Saidi, said he had doubts that such reforms would ever materialize.

A month before a highly symbolic May 9 parade on Red Square that celebrates victory in World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops face considerable challenges in Ukraine.

Here are some of Moscow's military and social objectives: