Following Iraq's parliamentary election this week, the complex and often lengthy task of choosing the country's next leader is set to begin.

For more than two years, Sudan's military and a powerful paramilitary force have torn the country apart in a war for power, both digging in against peace efforts even as atrocities mount and starvation spreads. One reason they can keep going is the support each reportedly gets from other nations looking for influence.

International alarm has grown since Oct. 26, when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces seized the key city of el-Fasher in Sudan's Darfur region from the military and reportedly went on a rampage. Witnesses and aid groups say fighters have killed hundreds of civilians, and the fate of thousands more is unknown.

Israeli military officials have warned that they are still not prepared to enter a multi-front war without an urgent budget increase to rebuild their forces and compensate for weapons shortages, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Tensions between the U.S. and China escalated in the weeks leading up to a possible meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. In response to recent U.S. restrictions, China plans to expand permitting requirements on rare earth products. Trump has threatened a 100% tariff on Chinese goods. Such is the game between the world's two largest economies, with both sides seeking an upper hand in the highly-watched trade negotiations.

Here's a look at how it unfolded over the past month.

As a tenuous ceasefire took hold in Gaza this month, Israel launched more airstrikes on southern Lebanon — 11 months into a ceasefire there.

The bombardment of a construction equipment business killed a Syrian passerby, wounded seven people including two women, and destroyed millions of dollars worth of bulldozers and excavators.

Two years after Hamas' attack ignited the war in the Gaza Strip, the militant group is weakened but not defeated, Israel has clobbered its enemies across the region but failed to achieve its main goals, and no one knows how it all will end.

The Oct. 7, 2023, attack, the deadliest on Israeli soil, sparked one of the most devastating military campaigns since World War II, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, flattening vast areas of the blockaded territory and triggering a famine in parts.

Denmark's support for Ukraine, its lack of anti-drone defenses and this week's EU summit in Copenhagen could all explain the unidentified drone sightings over Danish airspace that have been widely blamed on Russia.

Hezbollah suffered one blow after another during its most recent war with Israel, culminating in the killing of the group's longtime leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, in massive Israeli airstrikes on a Beirut suburb.

The group was weakened militarily and politically. Many of its opponents declared that its days as a dominant regional and local player were over.

A lot has happened in just a year on both sides of the Lebanon-Syria border. A lightning offensive by Islamist insurgents in Syria toppled longtime autocrat Bashar Assad and brought a new government in place in Damascus.

In Lebanon, a bruising war with Israel dealt a serious blow to Hezbollah — the Iran-backed and Assad-allied Shiite Lebanese militant group that had until recently been a powerful force in the Middle East — and a U.S.-negotiated deal has brought a fragile ceasefire.

The streets were almost deserted in Yerevan Saturday because of the summer heat, but at shaded parks and fountains, Armenians struggled to make sense of what the accord signed a day earlier in Washington means for them.