Barcelona and Spain legend Gerard Pique will appear in court on March 14 in a corruption investigation into the Spanish Super Cup's move to Saudi Arabia, a legal document seen by AFP on Friday showed.

The probe has further sullied the image of Spanish football and ensnared disgraced former federation chief Luis Rubiales who was in charge when the decision was made.

A Madrid court placed Pique under investigation in May last year over the contracts to take the Super Cup to the oil-rich Gulf country from 2020.

Bayer Leverkusen striker Victor Boniface is "happy" and "focused" even though a potential big-money January move to Saudi Arabia fell through last month, the German club's sporting director Simon Rolfes said Friday.

Boniface was left out of training and one matchday squad in January while Leverkusen were set to receive up to 70 million euros ($73.50 million) from Saudi side Al-Nassr, according to German media.

Instead, the Saudi club signed Aston Villa forward Jhon Duran for a reported fee of 77 million euros.

An intense Israeli military raid had already sent Qusay Farahat fleeing his home in the occupied West Bank, but the offensive has since expanded, threatening a relative's house where he sought shelter.

The raid, which according to Israel aims to dismantle "terrorist infrastructure", has targeted Palestinian refugee camps in the northern West Bank including Jenin where 22-year-old Farhat is from.

But since it began on January 21, the deadly Israeli offensive has gradually encroached upon more cities and towns.

The motive behind Sweden's deadliest mass shooting may never be known but the fact that almost all of the victims had foreign backgrounds has sparked concern among the country's immigrants.

On February 4, 35-year-old Rickard Andersson entered the Campus Risbergska adult education centre in Orebro and killed 10 people before turning his gun on himself.

Police have not publicly named the victims but their foreign backgrounds soon came to light when their names and photos were published in Swedish newspapers and on social media.

Engineer turned social entrepreneur Sabri Cheriha hunches over a washing machine at a small depot in a suburb of Tunisia's capital, the unassuming home of a startup he launched to tackle the country's mounting electronic waste problem.

Cheriha said there were currently about eight million household appliances and nine million cellphones in use across Tunisia, but once these devices break down or are replaced, "there's no service to properly dispose of them".

Saudi Arabia will host the leaders of four Arab countries at a summit on February 20 to discuss President Donald Trump's proposal for a US takeover of Gaza, a source with knowledge of the preparations said on Friday.

The leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will attend the summit, to take place ahead of an Arab League meeting in Cairo one week later on the same issue, the source said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, another source said Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas would also attend.

In a desolate area of Syria where Lebanese militant group Hezbollah once held sway, security forces shot open the gates to an abandoned building and found a defunct drug factory.

Syria's new authorities launched a security campaign last week around Qusayr at the porous Lebanese border, cracking down on drug and weapons smugglers.

They have also accused Lebanon's Hezbollah, which for years propped up Bashar al-Assad, of firing at them in clashes in the weeks since his ouster.

Israel said Friday it had received the names of three hostages to be freed by militants in exchange for Palestinian prisoners this weekend, after a crisis in the ceasefire threatened to plunge Gaza back into war.

The hostages due for release Saturday are Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen, Israeli-Russian Sasha Trupanov and Israeli-Argentinian Yair Horn, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

They have been held by Gaza militants since Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that sparked the war.

Thousands gathered in Beirut Friday to mark 20 years since the assassination of ex-premier Rafic Hariri, and to call for the return of his son Saad to political life.

Rafic Hariri, a billionaire and towering political figure who oversaw Lebanon's reconstruction after the 1975-1990 civil war, had recently resigned as premier when he was killed on February 14, 2005.

In 2022, a UN-backed court sentenced two Hezbollah members in absentia to life imprisonment for the massive suicide bombing that killed him and 21 others, though the group has refused to hand them over.

In a century-old building in Tehran, Saeed Anvarinejad turned the dial of a vintage radio to tune into some of Iran's earliest recorded sounds, some serving as reminders of the seismic changes that shaped the country's history.

Along with a team of fellow enthusiasts, he spent months tracking down the earliest recordings of Iranian music, speeches, interviews, theatrical plays, radio broadcasts and even the hum of daily life from more than a century ago up to the present day.