Financially crippled Lebanon finds itself in a new tug-of-war between regional kingpins Saudi Arabia and Iran after Riyadh and other wealthy Gulf states expelled the Lebanese envoy, analysts say.

The crisis erupted Friday when Saudi Arabia gave Lebanon's ambassador 48 hours to leave the country, recalled its envoy from Beirut and suspended all imports from Lebanon.

The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after then-President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot.

It had been three days since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for more than eight minutes until the 46-year-old Black man lost consciousness, showing no signs of life. A video taken by a bystander had been viewed millions of times online. Protests had taken over Minnesota's largest city and would soon spread throughout cities across America.

The Facebook Papers project represents a unique collaboration among 17 American news organizations, including The Associated Press. Journalists from a variety of newsrooms, large and small, worked together to gain access to thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower.

A separate consortium of European news outlets had access to the same set of documents, and members of both groups began publishing content related to their analysis of the materials at 7 a.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 25. That date and time was set by the partner news organizations to give everyone in the consortium an opportunity to fully analyze the documents, report out relevant details, and to give Facebook's public relations staff ample time to respond to questions and inquiries raised by that reporting.

Monday's military coup in Sudan threatens to wreck the country's fragile transition to democracy, more than two years after a popular uprising forced the removal of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir.

The move comes after months of mounting tensions between the military and civilian authorities. Protesters are in the streets denouncing the takeover, and troops have opened fire, killing some of the marchers, opening the door for greater turmoil in the country of 40 million.

For eight months, he has quietly investigated one of the world's worst non-nuclear explosions with only four assistants — and a lot of powerful detractors trying to block him.

In that time, Judge Tarek Bitar has become a household name in Lebanon and a staple on every news bulletin.

Two years after a now-defunct protest movement shook Lebanon, opposition activists are hoping parliamentary polls will challenge the ruling elite's stranglehold on the country.

Two months after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, one of the country's once-prominent female leaders — a former parliament member, candidate for president and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize — is visiting the United Nations, not as a representative of her government but as a woman in exile.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Fawzia Koofi called for humanitarian aid sent to Afghanistan to be contingent on the participation of women in its distribution, as well as free and safe travel for Afghans into and out of the country.

By challenging Lebanon's national passion for automobile ownership, and driving growing numbers towards greener or more collective transport, the economic crisis is succeeding where everything else failed.

He was only a year old when his panicked father picked him up and they fled with his mother from the gunfire rattling their neighborhood. It was the day Lebanon's civil war started 46 years ago. His family's apartment building in Beirut was on the frontline.

Now 47, Bahij Dana did the same thing last week. He evacuated his wife and two of his kids as gun battles raged for hours outside the same building. Civil defense rescuers came to help his father and mother, stuck in the lower floors.

They may often squabble but Lebanon's political parties seem united in rejecting an investigation into Beirut's massive port explosion that they fear could threaten their survival, analysts say.