Lebanon, which holds parliamentary elections on May 15, has been mired in a deep financial, economic and social crisis, aggravated by a political deadlock.

Lebanon's elections Sunday won't yield a seismic shift despite widespread discontent with a graft-tainted political class blamed for a painful economic crisis and a deadly disaster, experts say.

Finland and Sweden are nearing decisions on whether to ditch their long-standing policy of military nonalignment and join NATO in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
They would become the 31st and 32nd members of the trans-Atlantic alliance, which was founded by the U.S. and 11 other countries following World War II. Here's a timeline showing key developments in NATO's history.

As a law student in late 2019, Verena El Amil joined mass street protests against Lebanon's political elite. Now she wants to fight them at the ballot box.
At age 25, she is one of a growing number of independent candidates running in a May 15 parliamentary vote in the crisis-torn country.

Overloaded trucks and cars packed with families ply narrow, bumpy mountain roads surrounding this Yemeni city long-besieged by Huthi rebels -- evidence that the terms of a truce have yet to be met.
Announced just over a month ago, the truce called for warring parties to reopen the main roads into Taez, a city of roughly 600,000 people in Yemen's southwest that has been largely cut off from the world since 2015.

A series of bruising May primary contests will test Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party as voters weigh his preferred candidates ahead of November's midterm elections, starting Tuesday in Ohio.

The worst possible moment for bringing Trevor Reed home turned out to be the best.
With U.S.-Russian relations at their lowest point in decades, it seemed an improbable time to hope for the release of Reed, a former Marine detained in Russia for almost three years. Yet this week the Biden administration completed the type of transaction it had earlier seemed resistant to, exchanging Reed for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot and convicted drug trafficker serving a 20-year prison sentence in Connecticut.

The killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul sent an already tense and shaky relationship between Turkey and Saudi Arabia into complete free fall.
Fast-forward 3 1/2 years later and it appears Turkey and Saudi Arabia are attempting to build a bridge and move on.

Fears are growing over the fate of the May 15 parliamentary elections amid the latest security and political tensions in the country, a media report said on Wednesday.
“A political party is telling its members that there will be no elections on May 15 and that the beginning of May will be critical in this regard,” ad-Diyar newspaper reported.

From his surprise detention to an audacious escape from Japan hidden in an audio-equipment box, the rollercoaster saga of disgraced former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn has grabbed headlines worldwide.
In the latest twist, France has issued an international arrest warrant for Ghosn over suspect payments worth more than 15 million euros ($16.3 million) between the Renault-Nissan alliance and Renault's dealer in Oman.
