The UN Security Council failed Tuesday to reach consensus on extending a key Syria aid route, throwing into doubt a vital mechanism that provides life-saving support to millions of people.

Russia vetoed a nine-month extension of the agreement authorizing the operation of the conduit during a vote at United Nations headquarters in New York, and then failed to muster enough votes to adopt just a six-month extension.

The UN-brokered deal that allows for the delivery of aid overland from Turkey into rebel-held areas of Syria expired on Monday.

Indonesian maritime authorities seized an Iranian-flagged tanker carrying more than 200,000 metric tons of light crude oil after a suspected illegal transfer at sea, they said Tuesday.

Iran has been accused by the United States and its allies of using crowded shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere to circumnavigate Western sanctions on its nuclear programme.

The MT Arman 114 under the Iranian flag was "suspected of carrying out illegal transshipment activities" in Indonesia's exclusive economic zone, the maritime security agency said in a statement.

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on the International Criminal Court to investigate possible "war crimes" in Sudan's Darfur region where fighting has intensified despite calls for an end to the conflict.

The New York-based group charged that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militias "summarily executed" at least 28 members of the Massalit ethnic minority when they ransacked and torched much of the town of Misterei in May.

Israeli protesters blocked highways and converged on the Tel Aviv airport Tuesday, stepping up resistance to the hard-right government's judicial overhaul package opponents say threatens democracy.

Dozens of people were arrested, said police, who used water cannon and deployed mounted officers to disperse demonstrators in the commercial capital, Tel Aviv.

A sickly ginger kitten named Bebe is pulled out of a cat carrier at a veterinary clinic in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia.

The six-month-old is suffering from a strain of feline coronavirus that is wreaking havoc on the prolific cat population of Cyprus.

Cats are everywhere on the eastern Mediterranean island, home to the earliest evidence of the animal's domestication and known by some as the "island of cats".

Southern Iraq's fabled marshland is suffering its worst heatwave in the past 40 years, the United Nations warned on Monday, reporting a drastic drop in water levels.

Largely arid Iraq is ranked by the UN as one of the world's five countries most impacted by some effects of climate change, and authorities there say the country is going through its fourth straight year of drought.

Iraq endures blistering summer heat and frequent dust storms, and declining rainfall as well as upstream dams have reduced the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The transfer of crude oil from a decaying tanker off Yemen will begin early next week, the United Nations said Monday of an operation aimed at preventing a damaging Red Sea spill.

The 47-year-old FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since the Arabian Peninsula country plunged into civil war more than eight years ago.

A team of experts in May started inspecting conditions aboard the vessel and kickstarted preparations for the operation.

A UN-brokered agreement that allows for the delivery of aid overland from Turkey into rebel-held areas of Syria expired on Monday after the Security Council failed to hold a vote to reauthorize it.

The 15 members of the council had been trying for days to find a compromise to extend the deal, which since 2014 has allowed for food, water and medicine to be trucked to northwestern Syria without the authorization of the government in Damascus.

Israel's parliament adopted in a first reading a controversial bill that would limit court powers, in a new offensive to push ahead with a judicial overhaul that has split the nation.

The changes, proposed by the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have sparked one of the country's biggest ever protest movements since their announcement in January.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in weekly rallies, demanding a halt to the planned overhaul of Israel's justice system.

Annual inflation in Egypt hit 36.8 percent in June, official figures showed on Monday, an all-time high for the country grappling with a punishing economic crisis.

The previous record of 34.2 percent in July 2017 came, as it does now, following a sharp currency devaluation connected to a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.

The Egyptian pound has lost half its value against the dollar since early last year, shooting prices upward and adding to the burden of families struggling to make ends meet in the import-dependent country.