Twenty years since the Taliban's hardline regime was ousted from Kabul, the Islamists are back in power and putting a new political agenda into practice.

Workshops in Syria's Aleppo used to clatter on into the night before the war, but these days the machines grind to a halt at 6:00 pm sharp because of power cuts.

Fighting ended almost five years ago in the country's former economic hub, but limited electricity supply has hampered a full return to work in its manufacturing neighborhoods that produce everything from plastic to food.

As night falls on the Gaza Strip, Palestinian protesters approach the border fence with Israel, carrying homemade stun grenades and Molotov cocktails to hurl toward the enemy soldiers.

The aim of these so-called disruption operations, sponsored by the Islamist armed group Hamas that rules Gaza, is to harass the Israeli border forces -- but analysts warn it is a dangerous game.

As the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks approaches, Americans increasingly balk at intrusive government surveillance in the name of national security, and only about a third believe that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were worth fighting, according to a new poll.

More Americans also regard the threat from domestic extremism as more worrisome than that of extremism abroad, the poll found.

A car passed, the driver's window rolled down and the man spat an epithet at two little girls wearing their hijabs: "Terrorist!"

It was 2001, mere weeks after the twin towers at the World Trade Center fell, and 10-year-old Shahana Hanif and her younger sister were walking to the local mosque from their Brooklyn home.

Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi was ousted and killed in the 2011 uprising, but several of his family members survived. Nearly a decade on from the dictator's gruesome slaying, what has happened to them?

On Sunday, Gadhafi's third son, Saadi, was released from a prison in Tripoli, three years after he was acquitted over the murder of a football coach while still accused of shooting protesters during the revolution.  

With Morocco going to the polls on Wednesday, here are some milestones in the more than two-decade reign of King Mohammed VI.

- 1999: Breaks with father -

Twenty years after the September 11 attacks, the US "war on terror" is still being fought on a piece of hilly scrubland in southeast Cuba known as Guantanamo Bay.

Within months of the attacks, the United States rounded up hundreds of people with suspected ties to perpetrator Al-Qaeda and dropped them in the US naval base.

Two Israeli men who lost close relatives in sectarian mob violence, one Jewish and one Arab, have bonded in grief -- but their contrasting pursuits of justice highlight a deep divide.

Both are mourning loved ones who were killed in the mixed city of Lod during the spasm of inter-communal unrest that tore through Israel during the latest Gaza war. 

Ask anyone old enough to remember travel before Sept. 11, 2001, and you're likely to get a gauzy recollection of what flying was like.

There was security screening, but it wasn't anywhere near as intrusive. There were no long checkpoint lines. Passengers and their families could walk right to the gate together, postponing goodbye hugs until the last possible moment. Overall, an airport experience meant far less stress.