Lebanon's Middle East Airlines carrier is operating as normal and had not received any new guidelines after the latest Trump administration revived travel ban for visitors from mostly Muslim countries, reports said Friday.

Syria's government and its ally Russia accused Washington on Thursday of concocting a "provocation" in Syria, which would then be blamed on President Bashar Assad's government as alleged use of chemical weapons to justify an attack.

In a statement carried by the official news agency, Syria's Foreign Ministry said it rejects U.S. allegations that Syria was preparing for a chemical weapons attack, describing such accusations as "misleading" and "completely baseless."

The United Arab Emirates' energy minister says his country has sufficient resources to ward off any energy shortfall stemming from Gulf countries' standoff with key gas supplier Qatar.

Suhail Al Mazrouel told The Associated Press in Paris on Thursday that the UAE has "a backup plan that we can source fuel from." The UAE, he insisted, has no concerns about any shortfall "now or ever."

Once expunged from its official history, documents outlining the U.S.-backed 1953 coup in Iran have been quietly published by the State Department, offering a new glimpse at an operation that ultimately pushed the country toward its Islamic Revolution and hostility with the West.

The CIA's role in the coup, which toppled Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh and cemented the control of the shah, was already well-known by the time the State Department offered its first compendium on the era in 1989. But any trace of American involvement in the putsch had been wiped from the report, causing historians to call it a fraud.

Australian police charged a top Vatican cardinal on Thursday with multiple counts of "historical" sexual assault offenses, a stunning decision certain to rock the highest levels of the Holy See.

Cardinal George Pell, Pope Francis' chief financial adviser and Australia's most senior Catholic, is the highest-ranking Vatican official to ever be charged in the church's long-running sexual abuse scandal. Pell said he would return to Australia to fight the charges.

Israel launched airstrikes on Syrian army posts in Quneitra after several projectiles fired from Syria landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for a second consecutive day.

British police on Sunday said they arrested a woman after a car collided with pedestrians outside a Newcastle sports center where Muslims were celebrating the Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Six people were injured and police said the incident is not believed to be terror-related.

A pregnant 15-year-old who had been raped by a brother-in-law decided to marry her attacker, hoping this would shield her from other male relatives who might kill her in the name of "family honor."

A young woman was taken into protective custody after being stabbed 17 times by a brother who accused her of bringing "shame" to the family for running away from an abusive husband.

Faced with a sweeping set of demands, Qatar insisted Friday it can indefinitely survive the economic and diplomatic steps its neighbors have taken to try to pressure it into compliance, even as a top Emirati official warned the tiny country to brace for a long-term economic squeeze.

Given 10 days to make a decision, Qatar said it was reviewing the specific concessions demanded of the tiny Persian Gulf nation, which include shuttering Al-Jazeera and cutting ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. But Qatari officials didn't budge from their previous insistence that they won't sit down with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to negotiate an end to the crisis while under siege.

The leader of the Afghan Taliban said on Friday that a planned U.S. troop surge will not end the protracted war in the country and vowed to fight on until a full withdrawal of NATO troops from Afghanistan.

The remarks by Maulvi Haibatullah Akhunzadah came in a message ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al Fitr, something the Taliban do every year to rally followers.