The head of the UN's maritime agency said Monday there was "no legal basis" for imposing any fees for ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz.

Shipping through the narrow strait has been strangled since the US and Israel attacked Iran in late February.

Iran has sealed off the passage, sharply cutting oil and gas flows and sending prices soaring, while the US has blockaded Iranian ports. Tehran has also said it wants to impose transit fees as part of any lasting peace deal.

Signatories of the landmark nuclear non-proliferation treaty began a meeting Monday at the United Nations as fears of a renewed arms race escalate, with atomic powers again at loggerheads over safeguards.

In 2022, during the last review of the treaty considered the cornerstone of non-proliferation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned humanity was "one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation."

On Monday he warned "the drivers" of nuclear weapons proliferation were accelerating.

FRANKFURT, April 27 (Reuters) - Five people appeared in court in Stuttgart on Monday on charges of causing about 1 million euros ($1.17 million) of damage at the German site of an Israeli defence company, the court said.

Prosecutors say the defendants, aged 25 to 40, trespassed and shouted pro-Palestinian statements as they smashed office equipment, measuring devices and windows at the business in the southern city of Ulm, the court added.

April 27 (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Monday that Tehran was looking into U.S. President Donald Trump's request for negotiations, according to a post on the minister's Telegram account.

He told reporters in Russia that Trump requested negotiations because the U.S. has not achieved any of its objectives.

Trump scrapped a visit to Islamabad by his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for talks on ending the conflict, and said Iran could telephone if it wanted to negotiate.

(Reporting by Menna Alaa El-Din; Editing by Alex Richardson)

April 27 (Reuters) - Mortar and rocket attacks launched by Pakistan against neighbour Afghanistan killed four people on Monday and injured 70 more, Afghan Taliban's Deputy Spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat said in a post on X.

Pakistan, however, dismissed the claims as a "blatant lie".

(Reporting by Sakshi DayalEditing by Tomasz Janowski)

MOSCOW, April 27 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi in St. Petersburg on Monday and told him he hoped the Iranian people would weather what he described as a "difficult period" and that peace would soon prevail.

Russia has offered to mediate to try to help restore calm to the Middle East following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, which Moscow has condemned. It has also repeatedly offered to store Iran's enriched uranium as a way of defusing tensions, an offer the United States has not taken up.

BEIRUT, April 27 (Reuters) - The Israeli military began carrying out strikes in eastern Lebanon on Monday, expanding the scope of its bombing campaign during a ceasefire that has failed to fully halt hostilities with Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

The strikes on Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley marked the first time the area has been hit since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire came into force on April 16, significantly reducing the pace of attacks without entirely stopping the exchanges of fire.

April 27 (Reuters) - A superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian billionaire Alexey Mordashov sailed through the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, shipping data showed, one of very few vessels to transit the blockaded shipping lane at the heart of the U.S.-Iran conflict.

Nord - a 142-meter (465-foot) yacht worth over $500 million - left a Dubai marina at around 1400 GMT on Friday, crossed the strait on Saturday morning, and arrived in Muscat early on Sunday, according to data on the MarineTraffic platform.

JERUSALEM, April 27 (Reuters) - Two of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's top rivals announced they would join forces in an upcoming election to oust his coalition government, with a focus mainly on domestic issues such as military conscription for the ultra-Orthodox.

By Andreas Rinke and Kirsti Knolle

BERLIN, April 27 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday Iran's leadership was humiliating the United States and getting U.S. officials to travel to Pakistan and then leave without results, in an unusually abrupt rebuke over the conflict.

Merz also said he not see what exit strategy the U.S. was pursuing in the Iran war - comments that underlined deep divisions between Washington and its European NATO allies, which had already been festering over Ukraine and other issues.