It happens every November, when the cold descends on Kyiv. The change in weather always makes Dmytro Riznychenko think back, and he is overwhelmed by his emotions.

"This is where it truly began," Riznychenko said, walking through central Kyiv's Independence Square recently, reflecting on the uprising that unleashed a decade of momentous change for Ukraine, eventually leading to the current war with Russia.

Bartender Richard Alam has poured hardly any drinks at his pub in Lebanon's seaside city of Byblos, where once-busy streets have emptied of customers scared by border tensions during the Israel-Hamas war.

"I opened this whiskey bottle two weeks ago and it still isn't empty," said Alam, 19, standing behind his empty bar in the coastal city, home to a World Heritage site north of Beirut.

Gaza's Shifa Hospital has become the focus of a dayslong stalemate in Israel's war against the Hamas militant group.

Shifa is Gaza's largest and best-equipped hospital. Israel, without providing visual evidence, claims the facility also is used by Hamas for military purposes. It says Hamas has built a vast underground command complex center below the hospital, connected by tunnels, something Gaza health officials and Hamas deny.

Months after he was discharged from hospital, his right leg amputated, Mohammed Zendiq saw his image swirling online in a vicious disinformation campaign downplaying the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war.

The 16-year-old is one of many civilians on both sides caught in a haze of disinformation since Palestinian militants smashed through the highly militarised border on October 7, triggering an Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza.

Hezbollah has been trading daily cross-border fire with its sworn enemy Israel as war rages in Gaza, with the Iran-backed Lebanese group deploying a large weapons arsenal amassed over decades.

Below is a look at the group's firepower and how it has expanded since it fought a war with Israel in 2006.

When Hezbollah announced last week that its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah would deliver his first public speech since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, much of the region held its breath.

Would Iranian-backed Hezbollah, the Arab world's most powerful paramilitary force, continue its limited exchanges of fire with Israel or throw itself wholeheartedly into the war? In Lebanon, streets emptied as people sat glued to their screens to watch, ready to parse his words along with decision-makers in Israel and across the Mideast.

Yemen's Houthi movement launched missiles and drones at Israel on Oct. 31, 2023 – provoking fears of a dangerous escalation of the Middle East conflict.

With the militia – which controls part of the Arabian Peninsula state – vowing further attacks, Israel countered by sending missile boats to the Red Sea. They join U.S. warships already deployed in the area.

Over the past five days, Israeli ground troops have pushed deeper and deeper into Gaza in their war against Hamas, launched in response to a bloody Oct. 7 cross-border raid by the Islamic militant group.

A growing array of units, including naval, air and ground forces, have joined the effort. The army says it has killed scores of militants and damaged Hamas' strategic tunnel network. Soldiers have taken over abandoned Palestinian homes to stake out positions.

An Israeli government ministry has drafted a wartime proposal to transfer the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million people to Egypt's Sinai peninsula, drawing condemnation from the Palestinians and worsening tensions with Cairo.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office played down the report compiled by the Intelligence Ministry as a hypothetical exercise — a "concept paper." But its conclusions deepened long-standing Egyptian fears that Israel wants to make Gaza into Egypt's problem, and revived for Palestinians memories of their greatest trauma — the uprooting of hundreds of thousands of people who fled or were forced from their homes during the fighting surrounding Israel's creation in 1948.

The Israeli military has sought to assure the public it can achieve the two goals of its war on Hamas simultaneously — toppling the strip's militant rulers and rescuing some 230 captives taken from Israel.

But as the army ramps up airstrikes and ground incursions on the blockaded enclave, laying waste to entire neighborhoods in preparation for a broader invasion, the anguished families of captives are growing increasingly worried those aims will collide — with devastating consequences.