The Trump administration will issue new sanctions against Syria as early as Monday as part of its ongoing crackdown on the Syrian government and those who support it.

Three U.S. officials said that the sanctions are part of a broader effort to cut off funding and other support to Syria's President Bashar Assad and his government amid the country's escalating civil war. The U.S. blames Assad for a recent chemical attack on Syrian civilians, and responded earlier this month by launching missiles against a Syrian airfield.

Al-Qaida's leader has urged his followers and all militants in Syria to unite ranks and prepare for protracted jihad, or holy war.

Ayman al-Zawahri tells the jihadis to remain steadfast and change tactics to a guerrilla war. His remarks came in an audio message released on Monday by al-Qaida's media arm As-Sahab.

Israel has come to a standstill as people stopped in their tracks for a two-minute siren that wailed across the country in remembrance of the Holocaust's 6 million Jewish victims.

The ritual is the centerpiece of Israel's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day for those systematically killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. Motorists pulled over on Monday morning, stepping outside their vehicles, heads bowed in silence.

Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee says the leader of an Islamic State "sleeper cell" and one of the cell's members have been killed in a shootout with police.

The committee said in a statement Saturday that the shootout took place late the previous night in the Stavropol region, about 1,250 kilometers (750 miles) south of Moscow. Stavropol is adjacent to several majority-Muslim republics, including Chechnya where Islamic separatists fought an all-out war with Russian forces.

Drawn-out deaths. Communities torn apart. Survivor's guilt. Patrick Fallah says his memories of the days when the Ebola virus swept through Liberia are so awful that he sometimes has trouble focusing on the present.

"Sometimes when I have a flashback of the death of my son and others who died in the Ebola treatment unit, I don't want to speak to people. I grieve so much that my mind is not really on what I am doing," said Fallah, 30, who lost his 8-month-old son and stepmother and is president of the National Ebola Survivors Network of Liberia.

Turkey's justice minister slammed the main opposition party on Saturday for contesting the outcome of Sunday's referendum on expanding presidential powers and said there is no judicial path to reverse the ruling.

In a series of tweets, Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said all decisions on electoral issues, including complaints and fraud allegations, are in the purview of Turkey's electoral board.

The leader of Venezuela's rebellious congress has a message for the world's capitalists: Think twice before signing another check to President Nicolas Maduro's government.

Amid anti-Maduro protests roiling Venezuela, leading to 20 deaths and dozens of arrests the past three weeks, the opposition is trying to rally international opinion against his socialist government.

Many don't speak Arabic and their role in Syria is little known to the outside world, but the Chinese fighters of the Turkistan Islamic Party in Syria are organized, battled-hardened and have been instrumental in ground offensives against President Bashar Assad's forces in the country's northern regions.

Thousands of Chinese jihadis have come to Syria since the country's civil war began in March 2011 to fight against government forces and their allies. Some have joined the al-Qaida's branch in the country previously known as Nusra Front. Others paid allegiance to the Islamic State group and a smaller number joined factions such as the ultraconservative Ahrar al-Sham.

Ivanka Trump's brand intensified its work in China as her father closed in on the Republican nomination for U.S. president, with her company applying for nearly twice as many trademarks in a five-month span as it had in the preceding eight years.

Ivanka Trump Marks LLC applied for 36 trademarks in China between March and July of last year. From 2008 through 2015, it applied for a total of just 19 trademarks, China's trademark database showed .

The head of the Israeli army's strategic division has said that Hizbullah's border show of force on Thursday was "more blunt" than usual, but that the group's "violations" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 were “nothing new.”