Tearful crowds gathered on Wednesday for the funerals of hostages whose bodies were recovered this week from war-torn Gaza, with some mourners voicing anger that they were not saved.
"In what world must families beg, scream and cry for the return of their loved ones, alive or murdered? Bring them all back," Esther Buchshtab said while standing in front of her son Yagev's grave.
Iran's conservative-dominated parliament on Wednesday approved reformist president Masoud Pezeshkian's proposed cabinet, which includes one woman and a foreign minister open to dialogue with the West.
Lawmakers voted in favour of all 19 ministers chosen by Pezeshkian -- who was inaugurated in July after his predecessor Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash -- during a session broadcast on state television.
In a speech in parliament ahead of the vote, Pezeshkian said he initially "had ideal (candidates) on my mind".
The Israeli military killed a senior Palestinian militant in Lebanon on Wednesday, leading to accusations from the Fatah movement that Israel was trying to ignite a regional war.
The strike that killed Khalil Maqdah, described by Fatah as "one of the leaders" of its armed wing in Lebanon, came hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended a tour of the Middle East aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The two Egyptian inmates ate a routine final dinner in a prison in northern Saudi Arabia, not knowing they would be put to death for drug crimes the next morning.
Their abrupt killing this month extended a recent spree of drug-related executions in Saudi Arabia, after officials ended a moratorium on the death penalty for such crimes less than two years ago.
A young Israeli woman who became emblematic of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 said Wednesday that she thought every night in captivity would be her last, calling her survival a "miracle".
"Every night I was falling asleep and thinking, this may be the last night of my life," Noa Argamani, freed in a raid on Gaza by Israeli special forces in June, said in Japan on a visit with her father.
"And until the moment I was (rescued)... I just did not believe that I'm still surviving," Argamani, 26, said as she met with senior diplomats from Israel and G7 countries.
Lying on a hospital bed, Aisha Mohammed said she is "suffering" from cholera symptoms, an increasingly common ailment in Sudan where a prolonged war has ravaged the healthcare system.
Cholera, caused by contaminated water or food, had been common in Sudan particularly during the rainy season even before war broke out in April 2023 between rival generals.
But more than 16 months of fighting have forced most hospitals out of service, leaving the country of 48 million people struggling to control the sometimes deadly but treatable disease.
In a plant nursery in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, hundreds of pine, eucalyptus, olive and pomegranate saplings grow under awnings protecting them from the fierce summer sun.
The nursery in Sarchinar in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah is part of efforts to battle the destructive effects of deforestation in the region.
"Almost 50 percent of forests have been lost in Kurdistan in 70 years," said Nyaz Ibrahim of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP).
In war-ravaged Gaza, death appears to be the "only certainty" for 2.4 million Palestinians with no way to escape Israel's relentless bombardment, a UN official said Tuesday, recounting the growing desperation across the territory.
"It does feel like people are waiting for death. Death seems to be the only certainty in this situation," Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, also known as UNRWA, told AFP from Gaza.
In war-ravaged Gaza, every drop of water counts, making Inas al-Ghul's makeshift sun-powered water filter a vital asset for parched Palestinians surviving endless bombardment under the territory's scorching heat.
Using wood from the few pallets of aid that make it into Gaza, and window panes salvaged from buildings that have largely been abandoned in 10 months of war, the 50-year-old agricultural engineer built a glass-covered trough.
The Israeli military said on Tuesday it had retrieved the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in Gaza's southern area of Khan Yunis after a battle with Palestinian militants.
The hostages were Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, Chaim Perry, previously announced dead, and Avraham Munder, whose kibbutz of Nir Oz near Gaza announced his death earlier Tuesday.
Their families had been informed following intelligence analysis, the military said in a statement, later adding that the bodies were found on Monday night in a tunnel.
