Israel is holding its fifth national election in under four years, and once again the race is shaping up as a referendum on former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fitness to rule.

Netanyahu has been campaigning while standing trial on corruption charges. As Israel's opposition leader, he has portrayed himself as the victim of a political witch hunt and promised to reform a legal system he sees as profoundly biased against him. His main opponent, caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, is marketing himself as a voice of decency and national unity.

Already reeling from three years of economic meltdown, Lebanon faces the prospect of its multi-faceted crisis deepening further when President Michel Aoun's mandate expires in a week from now.

The deadline looms as the country is headed by a caretaker administration, since key parties have been unable to agree on a proper government to replace one whose mandate expired in May.

When Michel Aoun became president in 2016, putting an end to a two-year power vacuum due to political wrangling, he vowed to be the "strong" president Lebanon so desperately needed.

But as his mandate draws to a close next week, the country is reeling from an unprecedented economic crisis, with Beirut having been ravaged in 2019 by one of the world's biggest non-nuclear explosions.

With just one week remaining in Lebanese President Michel Aoun's term, lawmakers are no closer to consensus on his successor, amid fears of protracted horse-trading amongst the entrenched elite.

Here is a list of candidates who have either announced they were running for president or emerged as potential frontrunners.

Cholera is a highly contagious waterborne bacterial disease that can kill in a matter of hours.

A week before Israel's fifth general election in less than four years, one question dominates: will the hawkish ex-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu return to power?

Polls show he would likely need heavy backing from the country's rising extreme-right to form a government -- a scenario which, one expert warned, would spell "disaster" for Israel's democracy.

Observers of Britain's governing structure can be forgiven for scratching their heads in recent weeks as they watch the country reel through a succession of prime ministers without holding an election. While the opposition Labour Party is demanding an election, the governing conservatives are pushing on with choosing another prime minister from within their own ranks, which they have the right to do because of the way Britain's parliamentary democracy works.

BRITONS NEVER ACTUALLY VOTE FOR THEIR PRIME MINISTER

It is a British cliché that a week is a long time in politics. Liz Truss proved it true on Thursday when she became the shortest-serving British prime minister in history. In a matter of days, her U-turn on economic plans that made global markets jittery and the resignations of key ministers prompted calls from within Truss' party for her to step down. But the shakeup at the top is hardly an outlier in the recent history of Britain's Conservatives, whose latest troubles have been years in the making.

DAVID CAMERON'S DECISION

The Iranian-made drones that Russia sent slamming into central Kyiv this week have complicated Israel's balancing act between Russia and the West.

Israel has stayed largely on the sidelines since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last February so as not to damage its strategic relationship with the Kremlin. Although Israel has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine, it has refused Kyiv's frequent requests to send air defense systems and other military equipment and refrained from enforcing strict economic sanctions on Russia and the many Russian-Jewish oligarchs who have second homes in Israel.

Singers, actors, sports stars — the list goes on. Iranian celebrities have been startlingly public in their support for the massive anti-government protests shaking their country. And the ruling establishment is lashing back.