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It's the first step in making the multilayered pastries he's become famous for in the Al-Am'ari refugee camp in Ramallah. The last step is pouring syrup over a tray of the golden pudding-filled pastries just out of the oven, filling his shop with a sweet-tasting steam.

Palestinians here in the West Bank typically line up to buy these treats to celebrate Eid, the conclusion of the month-long dawn-to-sunset fasting of Ramadan. But this year, there's no line out the door and barely any pastries. This is one of the only batches he's making, a pistachio-laced gesture for a few friends.

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A former career U.S. diplomat was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison after admitting he worked for decades as a secret agent for communist Cuba, a plea agreement that leaves many unanswered questions about a betrayal that stunned the U.S. foreign service.

Manuel Rocha, 73, will also pay a $500,000 fine and cooperate with authorities after pleading guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen other counts, including wire fraud and making false statements.

Dozens of angry Israeli settlers have stormed into a Palestinian village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, shooting and setting houses and cars on fire. Palestinian health officials said one Palestinian man was killed and 25 others were wounded in the attack.

The violence was the latest in an escalation in the West Bank that has accompanied the war in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli rights group said the settlers were searching for a missing 14-year-old boy from their settlement. After the rampage, Israeli troops said they were still searching for the teen.

The killing came after an Israeli raid overnight killed two Palestinians, including a Hamas militant, in confrontation with Israeli forces.

Palestinian health officials say more than 460 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by Israeli forces since the war erupted in October.

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As president, Donald Trump “made it very clear” that he thought Ukraine “must be part of Russia”, his former adviser Fiona Hill says in a new book about US national security under threat from Russia and China.

“Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia,” Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.

“He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state.”

This, Sanger writes, meant Trump’s view of Ukraine was “essentially identical” to that of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who would order an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a year after Trump left office.

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