The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Thursday criticised an Iranian court's decision to slap an additional one-year jail term on imprisoned 2023 Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi.

Jorgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, called it "a flagrant violation of human rights and a travesty of justice".

Mohammadi, 52, has been jailed since November 2021 over several past convictions relating to her campaigns against the obligatory hijab for women and capital punishment in Iran.

Kuwait has announced temporary power cuts in some parts of the country during peak consumption hours, saying it is struggling to meet increased demand spurred by extreme summer heat.

In a statement on Wednesday, Kuwait's Ministry of Electricity, Water and Renewable Energy said the scheduled cuts would occur for up to two hours a day, in the first such step for the OPEC member state as climate change causes temperatures to rise.

In the sizzling Baghdad heat, Mussa Abdallah takes to the Tigris river during the day to cool off, while others opt for ice skating to escape the relentless temperatures.

"At the end of the day, I'm sweaty and exhausted because of the sun," said Abdallah, a 21-year-old house painter in the Iraqi capital.

"At home, there's no electricity. If I want to wash, the water is scalding hot," he added, describing how water stored above ground virtually boils at this time of year.

Fears of a regional war rose Thursday after Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement said none of Israel would be spared in a full-blown conflict, and Israel said it had approved plans for a Lebanon offensive.

Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets into northern Israel in retaliation for a deadly air strike in south Lebanon that Israel said killed a Hezbollah operative.

Hezbollah also claimed several other attacks on Israeli troops and positions on Thursday.

The death toll from this year's hajj has exceeded 1,000, an AFP tally said Thursday, more than half unregistered worshippers who performed the pilgrimage in extreme heat in Saudi Arabia.

The new deaths reported Thursday included 58 from Egypt, according to an Arab diplomat who provided a breakdown showing that of 658 Egyptians who died, 630 were unregistered pilgrims.

Around 10 countries have reported 1,081 deaths during the pilgrimage, one of the five pillars of Islam which all Muslims with the means must complete at least once.

Deadly heat that blanketed the United States, Mexico and Central America recently was made 35 times more likely due to global warming, an international network of climate scientists said on Thursday.

The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group of scientists also said that extreme highs witnessed over that region in May and June were four times as likely to occur today as a quarter of a century ago.

A Stockholm court on Thursday acquitted a Syrian former general of war crimes charges, saying prosecutors had not proved his involvement in the attacks carried out during the country's civil war.

Former brigadier general Mohammed Hamo, 65, who lives in Sweden and was one of the highest-ranking Syrian military officials to stand trial in Europe. He stood accused of "aiding and abetting" war crimes in the first half of 2012.

Four in every five people want their country to strengthen its commitments to addressing climate change, according to a global poll of 75,000 participants published on Thursday.

The survey by the UN Development Program, Oxford University and GeoPoll posed 15 questions by randomized telephone calls to people in 77 countries representing 87 percent of the world's population.

The key finding was that 80 percent of respondents want their governments to increase efforts to fight against global warming.

Fahd Ramadhan spent years building a life as a refugee in the Netherlands, only to have it unravel with his surprise arrest on a trip to his birthplace Saudi Arabia.

The 44-year-old has been detained for more than six months in a case human rights activists say highlights a widening Saudi crackdown on social media posts perceived as even mildly critical of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Israel's top army spokesman said Wednesday that Hamas cannot be eliminated, prompting a knee-jerk reaction from the government which quickly reiterated it remains committed to the Palestinian militant group's destruction.

More than eight months of war, sparked by Hamas's unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, have failed to oust the Islamist militants from Gaza but have brought widespread devastation.