After a long estrangement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad may be edging towards a meeting, but analysts say normalisation will likely be gradual due to thorny issues.

Ankara initially sought to topple Damascus after the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests, and Erdogan branded Assad a "murderer".

As Damascus regained territory, however, Erdogan reversed course. Since 2022, top Syrian and Turkish officials have met for Russia-mediated talks, with Moscow pushing for a detente.

Amor Nouira, a farmer in Tunisia's Chebika village, has lost hope of saving his prickly pear cacti, ravaged by the cochineal insect spreading across North Africa.

The 50-year-old has seen his half-hectare of cactus crops wither as the invasive insect wreaked havoc on about a third of the country's cacti after an outbreak in 2021.

"At first, I wanted to experiment with prickly pear production and gradually develop investments while looking for customers outside the country, especially for its natural oil," said Nouira.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to deliver a landmark speech to the US Congress this week, a visit that has now been thrown off balance by President Joe Biden's decision on Sunday not to seek re-election.

Israel's longest-serving premier will on Wednesday become the first foreign leader to address a joint meeting of the two chambers four times -- pulling ahead of Britain's Winston Churchill on three.

Lebanese official media said an Israeli strike on a town deep in the country's south Saturday evening targeted an ammunitions depot, lightly injuring three people and causing rockets to explode.

The airstrike about 30 kilometres from the border came after Hezbollah, which holds sway over large parts of Lebanon's south, and its Palestinian ally Hamas fired rocket salvos and explosive-laden drones at Israeli positions.

Israeli warplanes killed three people in the Huthi-controlled Yemeni port of Hodeida, the Iran-backed rebels said Sunday after the group's deadly drone attack in Tel Aviv.

The strikes on the vital port, which triggered a raging fire and plumes of black smoke, are the first claimed by Israel in the Arabian peninsula's poorest country, about 2,000 kilometres (1,300 miles) away, analysts said.

"The blood of Israeli citizens has a price," Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, adding more operations against the Huthis would follow "if they dare to attack us".

Doctors in Gaza described delivering a newborn baby against incredible odds on Saturday, pulling him from his mother's womb moments after she died of wounds sustained in an Israeli air strike.

At nine months pregnant, Ola Adnan Harb al-Kurd managed to survive just long enough to reach Al-Awda Hospital in central Gaza after an overnight strike hit her home in the Nuseirat refugee camp, medics said.

Inside an occupied West Bank settlement, ultra-Orthodox martial arts instructor Moshe Katz oversees students role-playing events from the October 7 Hamas attacks, teaching them how to reverse the guns in a hostage scenario.

"I'll take you hostage first, then you do it to me," he told a student while brandishing a blue rubber Kalashnikov during a simulation for Krav Maga, an Israeli fighting discipline.

Switching to playing a hostage, Katz told the student to grab him by the back of the shirt.

Catastrophic computer outages caused by a software update from one company have once again exposed the dangers of global technological dependence on a handful of players, experts warned on Friday.

A flawed update sent out by the little-known security firm CrowdStrike brought airlines, TV stations, and myriad other aspects of daily life to a standstill.

Adidas said Friday it had dropped vocal pro-Palestinian model Bella Hadid from an advertising campaign for retro sneakers referencing the 1972 Munich Olympics, which were overshadowed by a massacre of Israeli athletes.

The German sportswear giant recently relaunched the SL72, a shoe first showcased by athletes at the 1972 Olympics, as part of a series reviving old classic sneakers.

Iran is capable of producing fissile material for use in a nuclear weapon within "one or two weeks," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.

The details on Iran's capabilities emerged following the recent election of President Masoud Pezeshkian.

He has said he wants to end Iran's isolation and favors reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and global powers.

Blinken said, however, that "what we've seen in the last weeks and months is an Iran that's actually moving forward" with its nuclear program.