Thousands of Syrian insurgents took over most of Aleppo on Saturday, establishing positions in the country's largest city and controlling its airport before expanding their shock offensive to a nearby province. They faced little to no resistance from government troops, according to fighters and activists.

A war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized control of Aleppo International airport, the first international airport to be controlled by insurgents. The fighters claimed they seized the airport and posted pictures from there.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah brought hope for normality back to many in southern Lebanon, including fishermen who have long launched their single-engine wooden boats into the Mediterranean at dawn.

During the last two months of its year fighting Hezbollah, Israel imposed a siege on southern Lebanon that kept hundreds of fishers at this ancient Phoenician port on shore, upending their lives and the industry.

Dean Sweetland casts his gaze over a forlorn street in the Israeli community of Kibbutz Malkiya. Perched on a hill overlooking the border with Lebanon, the town stands mostly empty after being abandoned a year ago.

The daycare is closed. The homes are unkempt. Parts of the landscape are ashen from fires sparked by fallen Hezbollah rockets. Even after a tenuous Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire designed to let Israelis return to the north, the mood there is far from celebratory.

Hezbollah held a public funeral in a southern village on Friday for five of its fighters killed during the fighting with Israel. It was the first time the Lebanese militant group held a public funeral since after the war intensified in late September.

“My son is in heaven,” said Zeinab al-Haj holding a bag of roses to toss them on the coffin of her son Ali Hijazi during the ceremony in the village of Maarakeh. Hijazi died of wounds suffered in an airstrike last week.

Syrian government troops battled insurgents inside the country's largest city Aleppo for the first time since 2016, while warplanes targeted rebel supply lines on the city's edge, state media reported Saturday.

Inflation in the 20 countries that use the euro currency rose in November — but that likely won't stop the European Central Bank from cutting interest rates as the prospect of new U.S. tariffs from the incoming Trump administration adds to the gloom over weak growth.

The European Union's harmonized index of consumer prices stood up 2.3% in the year to November, up from 2.0% in October, the EU statistics agency Eurostat reported Friday.

Thousands of teachers, health care workers, trash collectors and others walked off their jobs across Italy on Friday to protest a decline in spending power, persistently low salaries and government policies they say have weakened public services.

Italy's most powerful trade unions called the eight-hour strike and mobilized marches in cities across the country to target Premier Giorgia Meloni's latest budget that they say penalizes schools, health care and other services. They also are pressing for a more equitable distribution of profits from private companies to workers.

A cryptocurrency entrepreneur who bought a piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million last week ate the fruit in Hong Kong on Friday.

Chinese-born Justin Sun peeled off the duct tape and enjoyed the banana in a press conference held in The Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the city's priciest hotels, in the popular shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui.

Every Wednesday, retiree Zhang Zhili travels an hour by bus to an education center, drawn by the pulsing rhythms of the African drum she plays there in a classroom filled with fellow retirees whose hands move in unison, every beat lifting her spirits.

Zhang, 71, has found joy and new friends at the "elderly university" in Beijing. Besides African drums, the former primary school teacher joins social dance classes, paying about 2,000 yuan ($280) for two courses this semester. Seeing herself standing tall in dance class boosts her confidence. After class, she hangs out with her friends.

On a bright winter day, workers at a Ukrainian thermal power plant repair its heavily damaged equipment as drops of water from melted snow leak through gaping holes in its battered roof.

Several weeks earlier, the facility was targeted by a Russian air attack that left scorch marks, shrapnel scars on the walls, and missile fragments scattered across the production floor.