WORLD

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, met with Emirati president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in the capital Abu Dhabi to discuss "opportunities for enhancing cooperation," according to the official WAM news agency.

Jerusalem woke on Thursday to the sight of a long red line painted by protesters along roads leading to Israel's Supreme Court, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a compromise deal for his government's planned judicial overhaul.

The 72-year-old Salameh, whose 30-year tenure at the bank is to end this summer, had missed a session on Wednesday after his lawyer objected to the French and German officials' presence.

The number of Islamic schools has grown across Afghanistan since the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, with teenage girls increasingly attending classes after they were banned from secondary schools.

The White House declined to confirm Netanyahu has yet to be invited.

South Korea's Samsung launched products to meet those aspirations and offered innovative financing schemes that made them affordable to most.

Framed by mountains running between the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey's border with Syria, Antakya was home to Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Persian, Arab and Ottoman empires over more than two millennia.

Falluja still bears the scars of battles that have raged through its streets. Beyond the smart main road entering the city, walls bear the pockmarks of bullets and some buildings that were pounded into the ground in military operations still lie in ruins.

Khan's aide Fawad Chaudhry said the Lahore high court had extended an order to halt the police operation until Friday. The state information minister, Amir Mir, confirmed the court order.

Police wanted to arrest Khan for skipping court dates to answer allegations he failed to declare gifts he received during his three-and-a-half-year turn in office --or the profits made from selling them.

Ebadi -- who won the Nobel Prize in 2003 and now lives in exile outside Iran -- insisted that "sanctions work" against the authorities in Tehran.

The brutal repression of the 2011 protests, which began during the Middle East's Arab Spring uprisings, triggered a complex civil war that drew in foreign powers and jihadists.

The meeting follows the surprise announcement last week of a Chinese-brokered restoration of diplomatic ties between the Middle East's major rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The German government is under pressure for hosting Netanyahu at a time of the disputed reforms, with critics urging Berlin to scrap the visit.

The US on Tuesday accused Russia of forcing down one of its Reaper surveillance drones over the Black Sea through a collision with a Russian Sukhoi-27 war plane.

The carrier, Riyadh Air, was officially unveiled on Sunday, and on Tuesday announced an agreement to purchase 39 Boeing Dreamliners, with options for 33 more jets.

The Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), which oversees the government coffers, also ordered the far-right ex-army captain to hand over to the presidential palace collection two guns he received as presents from the United Arab Emirates in 2019.

Russian hackers appear to be preparing a renewed wave of cyber attacks against Ukraine, including a "ransomware-style" threat to organizations serving Ukraine's supply lines, a research report by Microsoft said on Wednesday.

Washington says a Russian Su-27 clipped an MQ-9, requiring the drone to be brought down in the Black Sea, while Moscow denies responsibility and accuses the United States of conducting "hostile" flights in the region.

Washington's top general said the crash of a U.S. surveillance drone after being intercepted by Russian jets showed Moscow's increasingly aggressive behaviour, while Russia warned Washington that flying drones near Crimea risked escalation.

Turkey's parliament will "highly likely" ratify Finland's NATO accession bid before it closes in mid-April, two Turkish officials told Reuters on Wednesday, a day before Finnish President Sauli Niinisto visits the country.

If the resolution passes, the administration must submit the report within 30 days, or all security assistance to the country automatically stops.

The United States promised its 2003 invasion would herald a new era of democracy for Iraq but, 20 years on, Iraqis across the country's sectarian, ethnic and political divides say they have yet to see the dividends.

Pakistan's Imran Khan said on Wednesday he would heed a court summons, as his supporters continued to clash with security forces that had come to arrest the former prime minister for not showing up in a case against him related to selling state gifts.

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed called Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani to wish Qatar all the success in its bid to host the 2026 World Bank-IMF Meetings.

Amini was visiting the capital Tehran with her brother and cousins when she was arrested as they were leaving a metro station in the city centre last September.

The whistling sound from the projectiles was followed by explosions caused by munitions that released small, burning balls of white phosphorus that slowly fell to the ground.

Russia has been one of Syria's few allies during its years of war and political isolation.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea were hit by a series of unexplained explosions last September, in what Moscow has called an act of "international terrorism".