An Israeli strike killed 31 people in central Gaza Sunday, the Palestinian territory's civil defence agency said, as US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited for talks on the conflict.
Israeli troops have moved in on the Gaza Strip's far-southern city of Rafah, which the army describes as the last Hamas stronghold and where the United States says 800,000 civilians have been newly displaced by the fighting.
Social dramas have made Iranian films and their directors renowned at international festivals such as Cannes, but at home it's comedy that sells and has long been the favoured genre.
There are around 750 screens in the Islamic republic, and going to the movies is a preferred leisure activity for people seeking distraction from often difficult daily lives.
An Iranian film may be in competition at this year's Cannes, but it was comedy that monopolised the top six box office places in the Iranian year 2023-2024 that ended in March.
Saudi designer Tima Abid got her start at a time when fashion shows were taboo and tourism, apart from religious pilgrimages, was almost nonexistent in the Gulf kingdom.
So she was as surprised as anyone to see models draped in her latest couture collection gliding down an overwater boardwalk connecting beachfront villas that go for nearly $2,000 per night.
Hussein Julood is taking legal action against British energy giant BP after he lost his son to leukaemia, which he alleges was caused by gas flaring at Iraq's largest oil field.
The bereaved father, who lives near the Rumaila field in the southern province of Basra, is demanding that the firm compensate him for his son Ali's medical expenses, which have left him in crushing debt.
He wants BP to cover the costs of his 21-year-old's medical treatment -- including chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant -- and his funeral following his death in April last year.
Oleksandr Usyk beat Tyson Fury by split decision to win the world's first undisputed heavyweight championship in 25 years on Sunday, an unprecedented feat in boxing's four-belt era.
Britain's Fury was the early aggressor but Usyk gradually took charge and the "Gypsy King" was saved by the bell in the ninth round before slumping to his first career defeat.
Ukraine's Usyk, who remains undefeated, joins the likes of Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis and Mike Tyson as undisputed heavyweight champion, the first since boxing recognised four major belts in the 2000s.
The Israeli army said Saturday that troops had retrieved the body of hostage Ron Benjamin from the war-torn Gaza Strip after he was "murdered" during the October 7 Hamas attack.
Military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Benjamin's body was recovered in the same operation that saw troops retrieve the remains of three other hostages, which was announced on Friday.
Benjamin was "murdered during the October 7th massacre at the Mefalsim intersection, and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas militants", the military said in a separate statement.
Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi faces a new trial over accusations she made against the security forces of sexually assaulting female prisoners, her family said on Saturday.
The trial, due to begin on Sunday, relates to an audio message she shared from prison in April shared by supporters and in which she decried a "full-scale war against women" in the Islamic republic.
She is charged in this latest case with making "propaganda against the regime", it said.
There has been no comment on the case by the Iranian judicial authorities.
Film director Mohammad Rasoulof made an "exhausting and extremely dangerous" walk across a mountainous borderland in order to avoid being jailed in Iran on national security charges, he told the Guardian newspaper.
Rasoulof said Monday he had fled Iran after a court sentenced him to eight years in jail, of which five were due to be served, over his new film "The Seed of the Sacred Fig".
Fadoua Lamrani was elated when she was hired as a waitress at a restaurant in Morocco which employs people with mental disabilities.
The 33-year-old is among some 60 people with mental health conditions working at the eatery located on a farm and run by the Centre for Integration and Help through Work (CIAT).
"I was very happy when I was called to work here" in 2016, said Lamrani as she readied for the usual lunch service at the restaurant in Sale, a city near the capital Rabat.
Before then, she said, "I had been spending my days at home".
New divisions have emerged among Israel's leaders over post-war Gaza's governance, with an unexpected Hamas fightback in parts of the Palestinian territory piling pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli army has been battling Hamas militants across Gaza for more than seven months while also exchanging near-daily fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah forces along the northern border with Lebanon.
But after Hamas fighters regrouped in northern Gaza, where Israel previously said the group had been neutralised, broad splits emerged in the Israeli war cabinet.
