Uber driver Hussein Khalil was battling traffic in Beirut when he found himself in the Gaza Strip -- according to his online map, anyway -- as location jamming blamed on Israel disrupts life in Lebanon.
"We've been dealing with this problem a lot for around five months," said Khalil, 36.
"Sometimes we can't work at all," the disgruntled driver told AFP on Beirut's chaotic, car-choked streets.
"Of course, we are losing money."
Palestinians fled parts of southern Gaza in droves on Tuesday as Israeli forces launched deadly strikes and clashed with militants after issuing an evacuation order.
The Israeli army on Monday ordered the evacuation for most areas east of Khan Yunis and Rafah along the Egyptian border. It did not explicitly announce a military operation, but such orders have typically preceded major offensives.
Iranian artist Mohammad Hossein Aghamiri sometimes labours for six months on a single design, very carefully -- he knows a single crooked line could ruin his entire artwork.
In the age of AI-assisted graphic design on computer screens, the centuries-old tradition of Persian illumination offers an antidote to rushing the creative process.
Aghamiri's fine brush moves natural pigments onto the paper with deliberate precision as he creates intricate floral patterns, religious motifs and elegantly flowing calligraphy.
Taliban authorities were told women must be included in public life, UN Under-Secretary-General Rosemary DiCarlo said on Monday as she defended a decision to sideline civil society groups at official talks in Doha.
Rights organisations have strongly criticised the controversial UN move to exclude the groups, including women's rights activists, from the two-day meeting on Afghanistan as the price for the Taliban government's participation.
Every morning Palestinian boxer Waseem Abu Sal checks texts from his Cairo-based coach -- a Gazan who cannot travel to him in the occupied West Bank -- to see his daily Olympics training schedule as he prepares to make history.
The 20-year-old will be the first Palestinian boxer to participate in the Olympics after he bagged a wildcard spot and now dreams of delivering the first-ever medal for the Palestinians when he competes in Paris.
"This has been my dream since I was 10 years old," he told AFP the day after receiving the invitation last week.
Palestinian officials said an Israeli raid Monday killed a woman and a child in a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, where a militant was killed the day before.
The Israeli military, whose forces struck the same refugee camp on Sunday, did not immediately comment on the latest deaths.
The Palestinian health ministry said in a statement that the woman and the child were killed in Nur Shams camp, near the northern West Bank town of Tulkarm.
Four other people were wounded by Israeli "live fire", it said.
Four people were killed after armed protesters and Turkish forces clashed in Syria's Ankara-controlled northwest Monday, a war monitor said, in demonstrations sparked by violence against Syrians in Turkey a day earlier.
Hundreds demonstrated throughout the territory, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, following a rampage against Syrian businesses and properties in central Turkey where a Syrian man had been accused of harassing a child.
Israel carried out fresh strikes in southern Gaza on Tuesday, forcing hundreds of Palestinians to flee after the army once again ordered the evacuation of certain densely populated areas.
Witnesses reported multiple strikes in and around the city of Khan Yunis, where eight people were killed and more than 30 were wounded, according to a medical source and the Palestinian Red Crescent.
The bombardment came after a rare rocket barrage claimed by the militant group Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas.
Israel on Monday freed the head of Gaza's biggest hospital who said he was tortured during seven months in detention, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon after criticised the release as a "serious mistake".
Tensions over the freeing of Al-Shifa hospital director Mohammed Abu Salmiya became public almost as soon as he was sent back to Gaza with dozens of other Palestinians held since the October 7 attacks that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.
The World Health Organisation expressed concern after Abu Salmiya was detained on November 23 with other hospital staff.
Passengers and crew of a British Airways flight who were taken hostage in Kuwait in 1990 have launched legal action against the UK government and the airline, a law firm said Monday.
People on BA flight 149 were taken off the Kuala Lumpur-bound plane when it landed in the Gulf state on August 2 that year, hours after Iraq's then leader Saddam Hussein invaded the country.
Some of the 367 passengers and crew spent more than four months in captivity, including as human shields against Western attacks on the Iraqi dictator's troops during the first Gulf war.
