Iran-backed Hezbollah has been dealt a blow in Lebanon’s parliamentary election with preliminary results showing losses for some of its oldest allies and the Lebanese Forces party saying it had gained seats.
With votes still being counted, the final make-up of the 128-member parliament has yet to emerge. The heavily armed Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and its allies won a majority of 71 seats when Lebanon last voted in 2018.
The current election is the first since Lebanon’s devastating economic meltdown blamed by the World Bank on ruling politicians after a huge port explosion in 2020 that shattered Beirut.

Russian forces suffered heavy losses in a Ukrainian attack that destroyed a pontoon bridge they were using to try to cross a river in the east, Ukrainian and British officials said in another sign of Moscow’s struggle to salvage a war gone awry.
Ukrainian authorities, meanwhile, opened the first war crimes trial of the conflict Friday. The defendant, a captured Russian soldier, stands accused of shooting to death a 62-year-old civilian in the early days of the war.
The trial got underway as Russia’s offensive in the Donbas, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, seemed to turn increasingly into a grinding war of attrition.

The UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, concluded a two-day visit to Aden on Wednesday.

During his visit, Grundberg met with the President of the Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad Al-Alimi, Yemeni Prime Minister, Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed, and Vice President of the Presidential Leadership Council, Tareq Saleh.

The UN envoy reviewed the status of the truce and the benefits it has delivered so far to Yemeni civilians, particularly the significant reduction in civilian casualties.

Apple has lost its position as the world’s most valuable company amid a broad sell-off of technology stocks.

Saudi Arabian oil and gas producer Aramco has reclaimed the top spot from the iPhone maker for the first time in almost two years.

Investors have been selling shares in technology firms as they move into what they see as less risky assets.

Bitcoin, other major cryptocurrencies and digital assets have also continued to fall sharply.

Shares in Apple fell by more than 5% in New York on Wednesday to end the trading day with a stock market valuation of $2.37tn (£1.94tn).

That meant it lost its position as the most valuable company in the world to oil and gas producer Aramco, which was valued at $2.42tn.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made an unannounced visit to Algeria Tuesday to mark 60 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry tweeted that Lavrov held talks with Algeria’s foreign minister, Ramtane Lamamra, and attended a wreath-laying ceremony at a monument to heroes of the 1954–1962 Algerian War of Independence against France.
It was unclear whether the war in Ukraine was discussed during the meeting.

There was almost a 60 percent voter turnout for Lebanon’s diaspora ahead of parliamentary elections on May 15, officials said Monday.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that between 128,000 and 130,00 Lebanese expatriates out of 225,000 registered voters had cast their ballots.

The percentage of expat voters in 2018 was close to 56 percent when about 46,000 out of 82,000 registered voters cast their votes.

Observers of the electoral process said the expat turnout “did not live up to expectations because the people who registered to vote abroad had a personal desire to vote, but it seems that many of them abandoned that later.”

More than 10,000 people have fled fighting between the Iraqi army and Yazidi fighters affiliated with Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an official from Iraq’s Kurdistan region said.

The latest figure is more than double the 4,000 which an official from the region reported on Tuesday had arrived.

The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking non-Arab, non-Muslim minority who were massacred by Daesh in 2014.

Clashes left one Iraqi soldier dead on Monday in the northern region of Sinjar, the Yazidi minority’s heartland which is the site of frequent confrontations between security forces and local fighters allied with the separatist PKK.