The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday it would allow environmental activists to "assemble peacefully" at this year's UN climate talks, despite a prohibition on unauthorised protests in the Gulf state.

The oil-rich UAE, set to host COP28 from November to December in the business hub of Dubai, requires official permission for protests but effectively bans demonstrations it deems disruptive.

At the upcoming UN climate talks "there will be space available for climate activists to assemble peacefully and make their voices heard", it said.

The United Arab Emirates said Tuesday it would allow environmental activists to "assemble peacefully" at this year's UN climate talks, despite a prohibition on unauthorised protests in the Gulf state.

The oil-rich UAE, set to host COP28 from November to December in the business hub of Dubai, requires official permission for protests but effectively bans demonstrations it deems disruptive.

At the upcoming UN climate talks "there will be space available for climate activists to assemble peacefully and make their voices heard," it said.

A Palestinian gunman opened fire at a group of Israelis in a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, wounding six people before being shot dead, police said.

"A terrorist opened fire at a group of people in Maaleh Adumim," a police statement said, referring to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

"The terrorist was neutralised by an off-duty border police officer."

Police later confirmed to AFP that the gunman was shot dead.

Iran on Tuesday declared a two-day holiday for government workers and banks nationwide as searing temperatures sweep across the country, state media reported.

The decision came after the meteorological office forecast temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in many cities, and hovering around 50 degrees Celsius in the southwest.

State broadcaster IRIB has said many cities including in the provinces of Ilam, Bushehr, and Khuzestan have seen temperatures rise above 45 degrees Celsius in recent days.

The Yazidis, who Britain on Tuesday officially acknowledged as victims of "acts of genocide" by the Islamic State (IS), are a Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious minority found mainly in Iraq.

IS jihadists carried out horrific violence against the community in 2014, killing men en masse and abducting thousands of girls and women as sex slaves.

Here are some key facts about the Yazidis:

- Ancient faith -

The Yazidis are followers of an ancient religion that emerged in Iran more than 4,000 years ago and is rooted in Zoroastrianism.

The British government on Tuesday officially acknowledged that the Islamic State group committed "acts of genocide" against the Yazidi people in 2014.

The Yazidis -- whose pre-Islamic religion made them the target of IS extremists -- were subjected to massacres, forced marriages and sex slavery during the jihadists' 2014-15 rule in the northern Iraq province of Sinjar, the Yazidis' traditional home.

In the unbearable midday heat, a Libyan patrol near the border with Tunisia comes across a black African man collapsed on the reddish-brown desert sand.

He is barely breathing, and officers try to revive him, gently, with a few drops of water on his lips.

The man is just one among hundreds of migrants arriving daily in Libya after being abandoned in the desert borderland by Tunisian security forces, according to Libyan border guards and the migrants themselves.

Three days of fighting in south Lebanon's Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp have left at least 11 dead and dozens wounded, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Monday.

Clashes broke out over the weekend between members of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's secular Fatah movement and Islamist militants based in the camp, Lebanon's largest located in the coastal city of Sidon.

Renewed gunfire and shelling on Monday shook the camp, said an AFP correspondent in Sidon, sending frightened residents fleeing.

Frustration as other foreign nationals were set free. Occasional phone calls, months apart. And the constant fear that the executioner's noose could be tightened any day.

The family of Jamshid Sharmahd have endured three years of torment as each day they await a breakthrough, while always fearing the worst, for the German citizen sentenced to death in Iran.

Sharmahd was abducted three years ago in late July 2020 by the Iranian authorities and sentenced earlier this year to be hanged for "corruption on earth". Iran's Supreme Court in April confirmed the death penalty.

Mohammed has been taking nearly a dozen captagon pills daily for seven years. Now, as Iraq grapples with a major drug crisis, the 23-year-old hopes for a fresh start.

Iraq, which borders with Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, has long been a transit country for the region's ballooning trade in the amphetamine-type drug and other narcotics.

But in recent years, Iraq itself has witnesses a dramatic spike in drug abuse, prompting authorities to search for answers, both by cracking down on traffickers and by providing help to addicts.