Jordan's Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah married Saudi architect Rajwa Al Saif on Thursday in a wedding attended by royals from across the globe.

The ceremony took place in the mid-century Zahran Palace in the capital Amman -- the scene of other key Hashemite kingdom weddings including that of King Abdullah II to Queen Rania and also that of the monarch's father, the late King Hussein bin Talal.

Thousands of Israelis joined Jerusalem's Pride parade Thursday, a high-security event in the conservative city where critics of LGBTQ rights held a counter-demonstration nearby.

The annual march is being held for the first time under the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which includes multiple cabinet members who have expressed homophobic views in the past.

Sprawled nonchalantly across the doorstep, a large tomcat welcomes visitors to Tehran's cat museum and cafe, a curious establishment where some 30 friendly felines roam freely throughout the exhibition space.

Shahrzad, Farrokh, Shapoor and Shirin are among the real stars of this attraction in a small two-storey building in the centre of the Iranian capital.

Director Hossein HamlehDari says that when it first opened in 2020 it was named the "meowseum".

It is a place where visitors and cats coexist peacefully in the exhibition rooms and on the cafe terrace.

Cristiano Ronaldo's first season in Saudi Arabia ended with a whimper, but with hundreds of millions in wages and unprecedented attention on Saudi football he may not be the last megastar to grace the oil-rich kingdom.

The fireworks and euphoria that greeted Ronaldo's gala unveiling in January were in sharp contrast to the close of Al Nassr's season, when the Portuguese sat out a 3-0 win against Al Fateh late on Wednesday.

The United States announced sanctions Thursday on Sudanese leaders it blames for the breakdown of US and Saudi-brokered ceasefire efforts after shelling and air strikes killed 18 civilians at a Khartoum market.

For nearly seven weeks, Khartoum and other parts of Sudan have been gripped by deadly fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, both of which Washington held responsible for violating the ceasefire and provoking "appalling" bloodshed.

Transferring more than a million barrels of oil from an abandoned tanker anchored off the shore of Yemen comes with "palpable risks" -- but doing nothing could lead to a devastating oil spill, a senior UN official said Wednesday.

"If something were to go wrong, indeed, many questions will be asked," said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Development Program, which is in charge of salvage of the FSO Safer, underway since Tuesday.

But "walking away is not an option," he told AFP in an interview.

Accompanying Naomi Campbell on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival last week was one of cinema's most powerful men -- and he represents a country where cinemas were banned until five years ago.

Mohammed Al Turki, 36, heads Saudi Arabia's Red Sea Film Foundation, his name splashed all over posters and movie credits at the world's biggest cinema gathering on the French Riviera.

The foundation, formed two years ago, holds its own annual festival and has already financed 168 movies, including eight in the official selection at Cannes this year.

Saudi Arabia has charged a women's rights activist detained since November over her social media posts with launching a "propaganda campaign", according to court documents seen by AFP on Wednesday.

Manahel al-Otaibi was arrested for social media posts challenging the country's male guardianship laws and requirements for women to wear the customary body-shrouding abaya.

Public prosecutors accused her of leading a "campaign to incite Saudi girls to denounce religious principles and rebel against the customs and traditions of Saudi society," according to the documents.

Ryyan Alshebl fled war-torn Syria in 2015, arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos after a harrowing four-hour journey on a rubber boat.

Eight years on, he is the mayor of a German village.

"It was dark and cold and there was not a single light to be seen on Lesbos," he recalls.

"A few hours ago we had been in a normal Mediterranean town in Turkey. The environment had transformed with the cold and dark, and of course the feelings of fear that go with such a journey."

Alshebl, then barely 21, was among a huge wave of refugees who arrived in Europe that year.

The Sudanese army suspended its participation in US- and Saudi-brokered ceasefire talks Wednesday accusing its paramilitary foes of failing to honour their commitments.

The mediators of the talks in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah have acknowledged repeated violations of the truce by both sides but have so far held off imposing any sanctions in the hope of keeping the warring parties at the negotiating table.