Palmyra, the ancient Syrian city that has fallen to the Islamic State jihadist group, has withstood the last 2,000 years with its immaculate temples and colonnaded streets.

Listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, the "pearl of the desert" is a well-preserved oasis 210 kilometers (130 miles) northeast of Damascus.

A Syrian refugee couple and their baby boy were recently dropped from a U.N. food voucher program and live on $9-a-day jobs on a peach farm in northern Jordan. In a town nearby, a 16-year-old boy quit school to work as a mechanic's helper because his refugee family needs the extra $21 a week.

With the Syria conflict in its fifth year, the struggle for survival is getting tougher for many of the close to 4 million Syrians who fled to neighboring countries, particularly those in Jordan and Lebanon, where the highest number of refugees have settled.

Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis displaced by anti-Taliban military operations in tribal areas wish only to return home -- but first they have to agree to fight the extremists themselves.

It's "social engineering" unheard of in the recent war on terror: displace an entire population, fight the insurgents who remain, then bring back those uprooted and charge them with keeping the militants at bay.

Southeast Asia's timid diplomacy and a see-no-evil approach to human-trafficking is to blame for its boatpeople influx, and overcoming the crisis will pose a severe test for a region loathe to address divisive issues, diplomats and analysts said.

In particular, the region has allowed the problem to fester by failing to curb Myanmar's systematic abuse of its unwanted Rohingya people, which has sent masses of the Muslim ethnic minority fleeing abroad, they said.

Burundi's President Pierre Nkurunziza was in a confident, defiant mood as his motorcade rolled back into the capital Bujumbura following a failed coup, cheered by supporters and safely under the watch of loyalist troops who fought off the uprising.

With the plotters in detention or on the run, state radio still broadcasting the government message and independent media silenced, there was little doubt of who was in charge after two days of uncertainty.

After weeks of coalition wrangling, Benjamin Netanyahu started his fourth term as Israeli premier Friday, but he faces an even tougher task to mend fences with the United States and Europe.

Soon after its narrow approval by parliament late Thursday, the new rightwing government was warned by Washington that it must forge a deal with the Palestinians for its own good.

The chances of anyone being prosecuted for Syrian war crimes are today smaller than ever, experts say, as realpolitik smothers an increasingly solid mountain of evidence accumulated during the often barbaric four-year conflict.

Rights groups have steadfastly documented atrocities committed on the ground, and on Wednesday a committee of renowned investigators said it had enough evidence to prosecute up the chain of command to President Bashar Assad himself.

Poverty-stricken and loathed at home, Myanmar's Rohingya are one of the world's most persecuted minorities -- yet their dire situation has long been ignored in Southeast Asia. 

The Muslim community's friendless status angers activists, who say that regional negligence can now be counted in lives lost as a wave of migrants find themselves in desperate straits at sea.

Nepal's earthquake should act as a wake-up call to neighboring countries which have failed to learn lessons from their own disasters and where shoddy construction and rapid urbanization could lead to death on an even greater scale next time round, experts say.

Given its location on a seismic faultline, another major earthquake had long been feared in the Himalayan nation following a disaster in 1934 that flattened much of the capital Kathmandu.

Dozens of Iraqis crowding a Baghdad street fought to glimpse the red-haired man in a glass coffin, hoping to witness the end of a long-feared member of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The furore over the dead man -- who might be Saddam's deputy Izzat al-Duri, though his identity has still not been determined -- is yet another sign of the influence the dictator exercises in Iraq more than 12 years after his overthrow.