Caught in the middle of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, Lebanon is paying the price for the growing rivalry between the Middle East's main Sunni and Shiite powers.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are important players in Lebanon, where foreign powers have long backed a range of Sunni, Shiite and Christian groups on the country's complex political scene.

For generations, they were owned by the rich and powerful, who bought and sold them as chattels. 

The owners would sometimes force them to wear collars fitted with iron spikes on the inside, to prevent them from lying down to rest when they were supposed to work. 

Their guns propped up on a mattress nearby, Tarek Muhrem and his fellow Syrian rebel fighters plop down on their couch along Aleppo city's front lines for an evening of football video games.

Instead of rifle triggers and walkie-talkies, they grasp small glasses of coffee and sweet tea between PlayStation sessions in their makeshift base in a battle-scarred neighborhood.

A landmark ceasefire has lifted the burden of daily rocket attacks and bomb blasts in Syria's second city Aleppo -- but not its residents' profound thirst.

Citizens on both sides of the fault line dividing Aleppo between regime and rebel forces are suffering from their longest water shortage yet in the nearly five-year war. 

In Syria's second city Aleppo, rescue workers have been taking advantage of the quiet to play football outside. For the first time in years, they have no one to save.

Under a huge Turkish flag waving in the breeze from a towering pole, the Elbeyli camp for Syrian refugees is seen as a place of pride by Turkey which has taken in tens of thousands fleeing the war just across the border.

Neat rows of pre-fabricated containers turned into two-room homes of about 21 square meters (226 square feet) provide shelter for 24,000 people. There are satellite antennas on the roofs. Every day the refugees are given food and each receives 85 Turkish lira (26 euros) a month. 

Germany is putting on trial several former members of the Nazi SS this year -- but seven decades after the war, they are in their 90s and unlikely to end up behind bars.

Yet that doesn't diminish the importance of the legal proceedings, experts say, for they serve a role in educating a new generation about the horrors of the Holocaust.

Cessation of hostilities, ceasefire or truce: these terms, all used in attempts to resolve the conflict in Syria, are similar and often used indiscriminately.

However, they have different legal and symbolic meanings.

Tit-for-tat executions on the streets of Dublin and threats to journalists have thrust gangland crime and a violent history to the forefront of Ireland's election campaign ahead of Friday's vote.

The war between two rival criminal gangs with roots in the north and south of the capital culminated with masked men with AK-47 rifles storming a boxing event earlier this month, in an audacious daylight assault that brought armed police patrols and checkpoints to the streets of Dublin.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's apparent determination to seal a ceasefire in Syria shows Moscow is keen to cement its gains after saving Bashar Assad and forcing its way back to the heart of international diplomacy, analysts say.

When Moscow blindsided the West by launching a high-risk air campaign last September, Assad's army was crumbling and the Kremlin was being given the cold shoulder over the conflict in Ukraine.