Bassem Mroue, Associated Press

Mediation successfully de-escalated one of the most serious political crises in the kingdom in decades, the palace and a confidant of the prince said Monday.

In a brief televised speech after three of his ministers resigned, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said that he is taking "a step back" so he can stand with the people "and fight the battle for change alongside them."

Notorious for their gruesome methods of killing, the Islamic State group reserves one of its most brutal for suspected homosexuals: tossing them off high-rise rooftops.

Twin suicide bombings struck a southern Beirut suburb that's a stronghold of the Shiite Hezbollah group on Thursday evening, killing at least 37 people and wounding scores more in one of the deadliest attacks in years in Lebanon.

The main activist group tracking the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said it has so far confirmed 185 civilians killed in Russian strikes the past month — including 46 women and 48 children — while the toll among IS fighters was 131.

The United States and Turkey are finalizing plans for a military campaign to push the Islamic State group out of a strip of Syrian territory along the Turkish border, a move that would further embroil Turkey in Syria's civil war and set up a potential conflict with U.S.-backed Kurdish forces.

Islamic State militants overran the famed archaeological site at Palmyra early on Thursday, just hours after seizing the central Syrian town, activists and officials said, raising concerns the extremists might destroy some of the priceless ruins as they have done in neighboring Iraq.