Syria will let humanitarian aid flow through its main border crossing into rebel-held areas, reopening a conduit that had closed after a Security Council stalemate, the country's UN ambassador said Thursday.

Damascus has made a "sovereign decision" to let aid move overland from Turkey through the Bab al-Hawa crossing in northwest Syria for six months starting Thursday, ambassador Bassam Sabbagh told reporters.

He said he sent a letter to this effect to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council.

The International Criminal Court has opened a new probe into alleged war crimes in Sudan, its chief prosecutor said Thursday, expressing major concern over escalating violence.

Karim Khan made the announcement in a report to the UN Security Council, after three months of war between feuding generals have plunged the northeast African country back into chaos.

The ICC has been investigating crimes in Sudan's Darfur region since 2005 after a referral by the UN Security Council, and the Hague-based court has charged former leader Omar al-Bashir with offenses including genocide.

Sultan Al Jaber, Emirates oil executive and president of the most important climate summit since the Paris Agreement in 2015, has a quick answer when asked when the world will stop burning fossil fuels: when there's enough clean energy to replace them.

"We cannot shut down the energy system of today before we build the new energy system of tomorrow that is equipped with zero-carbon emission sources," said Jaber, head of the United Arab Emirates national oil company ADNOC and head of the upcoming COP28 climate summit.

"We don't want to create an energy crisis."

Trade ties between France and Gulf Arab states, namely Qatar and the UAE, are expanding year-on-year, France's trade minister told AFP on Thursday, praising the deepening partnership as "good news".

During a visit to the United Arab Emirates, Olivier Becht said trade ties between the UAE and France totalled more than 7 billion euros per annum, up from 6 billion euros before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday urged nations targeted by Western sanctions to band together as he hosted the leader of fellow international outlier Iran.

President Ebrahim Raisi arrived for the last leg of the first Africa tour by an Iranian leader in 11 years, on a tour aimed at easing the Islamic republic's international isolation.

Raisi is the highest profile leader to visit Zimbabwe in the thick of an election campaign for a closely-watched August 23 presidential and parliamentary vote.

Two leading opponents of Tunisian President Kais Saied have been freed after spending more than five months in jail, but expressed concern about fellow activists still behind bars.

Writer Chaima Issa, a member of the main opposition coalition the National Salvation Front, was arrested in February along with former minister Lazhar Akremi, a lawyer.

Both were among some 20 opposition, media and business figures arrested in February on charges of "conspiracy against state security".

A summit of African leaders from war-torn Sudan's neighbours Thursday urged an end to the fighting, as UN experts reported a mass grave had been discovered in the country's Darfur region.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) meanwhile said it has opened a new probe into alleged war crimes in Sudan, adding that the escalating violence was a "matter of great concern".

While Cairo hosted the crisis meeting on the nearly three-month-old conflict, gun battles, explosions and the roar of fighter jets again shook the Sudanese capital Khartoum, residents told AFP.

As much of the world swelters in record temperatures, spare a thought for Issam Genedi, who ekes out a living washing cars in one of the planet's hottest regions, the Gulf.

Pausing from his work at an outdoor carpark in Dubai, the Egyptian migrant says the United Arab Emirates' furnace-like summer feels even hotter this year.

"This summer is a little more difficult than other years," says Genedi, who shines cars for about 25 dirhams ($6.80) a time in temperatures that pass 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) each day.

Mohammed Hamid Nour is only 23, but he is already nostalgic for how Iraq's Mesopotamian marshes once were before drought dried them up, decimating his herd of water buffaloes.

Even at their centre in Chibayish, only a few expanses of the ancient waterways -- home to a Marsh Arab culture that goes back millennia -- survive, linked by channels that snake through the reeds.

Pull back further and the water gives way to a parched landscape of bald and cracked earth.

From subtly shifting the position of Ramses II's sceptre, to touch-ups on a necklace or headdress, ancient Egyptian artists were more creative than previously thought, according to a study published Wednesday.

Using new portable imaging and chemical analysis techniques, an international team of scientists took a fresh look at paintings in the Valley of the Kings -- a royal burial ground for pharaohs and other ancient Egyptian elites.