Syrian President Bashar Assad's government benefited from variations in foreign currency exchange rates, boosting state coffers with at least $100 million in international aid money over the last two years, according to new research.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed hope on Friday that new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett would continue in the footsteps of his predecessor in maintaining close and "trusting" relations with his country.

After talks at Putin's lush Black Sea residence in Sochi, Bennett hailed bilateral ties as "strategic" and emphasized the need to maintain an "intimate" dialogue with Moscow.

Libya's fragile unity government hosted an international conference Thursday to build support ahead of the war-battered country's landmark December election.

A Palestinian held without charge by Israeli authorities is in "extremely dangerous" condition more than three months into a hunger strike to protest his detention, a group representing detainees said Thursday.

Miqdad al-Qawasmi, 24, is the least healthy of six incarcerated Palestinian hunger strikers who are demanding their release from so-called administrative detention, according to Anani Sarahneh, a spokeswoman for the Palestinian Prisoners Club. The policy allows Israel to hold Palestinians for months or years without charge.

The United States said Thursday that a base in Syria used by the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group was attacked with drones and artillery.

The Syrian government has executed 24 people it convicted of deliberately starting deadly wildfires that raged in the summer of last year, the justice ministry said Thursday.

In the Kurdish city of Halabja in northeastern Iraq, municipal director Kwestan Faraj recalls the day when being a woman saved her life.

The United Arab Emirates' crown prince received a rare telephone call from Syrian President Bashar Assad in which they discussed strengthening relations and cooperation, Syria's state media reported Wednesday.

The call between Assad and UAE's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed came as some Arab countries are improving relations with Syria, a decade after the country's civil war began.

Several blasts were heard from the al-Tanf base used by the U.S.-led coalition near Syria's borders with Iraq and Jordan, a war monitor reported on Wednesday.

Israel has confirmed a case of a subvariant of the Delta strain of COVID-19 previously reported in some European countries, the health ministry said.

“The variant AY 4.2. that has been discovered in a number of countries in Europe has been identified in Israel,” a ministry statement said late Tuesday.