Spotlight
Israel said Monday it is "interested" in striking peace agreements with neighboring Lebanon and Syria, a potentially historic shift in the region after decades of war and animosity.
With Syria under new leadership after the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement weakened, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar told journalists his government wanted more normalization agreements with Arab countries.

With the Iran-Israel war opening up a new road for the Mideast, Syria and Lebanon need to reach peace agreements with Israel, the U.S. special envoy to Syria said Sunday.
"President (Ahmad) al-Sharaa has indicated that he doesn’t hate Israel... and that he wants peace on that border. I think that will also happen with Lebanon. It’s a necessity to have an agreement with Israel," Tom Barrack said in an interview with Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said in a Ashoura commemorations televised speech overnight that the "ongoing aggression" by Israel "must not be allowed to continue."

Israeli drones fired two missiles at dawn Sunday at two homes in the southern border towns of Aita al-Shaab and Ramyeh, causing material damage, the state-run National News Agency reported.

An Israeli strike on Tehran's Evin prison during this month's 12-day war killed at least 71 people, Iran's judiciary said Sunday, days after a ceasefire ended hostilities between the two arch-foes.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi says Iran likely will be able to begin to produce enriched uranium "in a matter of months," despite damage to several nuclear facilities from U.S. and Israeli attacks, CBS News said Saturday.

U.S. President Donald Trump has said the United States was "not going to stand" for the continued prosecution of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges.
"The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Syria said Friday that authorities had seized some three million pills of the illicit stimulant captagon after clashes with a drug trafficking network near the Lebanese border.

Four people were wounded in an overnight Israeli drone strike on a house in the southern town of Shaqra.
The strike came after a woman was killed and 25 other people wounded in Israeli strikes earlier in the day in the country's south, as the Israeli army blamed Hezbollah munitions for the death.

U.S. President Donald Trump voiced optimism Friday about a new ceasefire in Gaza, as criticism grew over mounting civilian deaths at Israeli-backed food distribution centers in the territory.
