Saudi Arabia is working to reduce its reliance on oil exports, Economy Minister Faisal Al-Ibrahim said Wednesday, as the Middle East powerhouse sent one of the largest delegations to the Davos summit to make its case.

Despite its goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2060, the country remains hugely dependent on crude oil exports that have powered its growth for decades, raising doubts about its potential for an economic makeover any time soon.

A son of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has been freed after serving more than seven years of a 10-year jail sentence for fraud, Iranian media reported Wednesday.

Mehdi Hashemi, 53, left Tehran's Evin prison late Tuesday, his lawyer Vahid Abolmaali said, quoted by the ISNA news agency.

State prosecutors said his release was "conditional", ISNA reported.

Hashemi was convicted of fraud, embezzlement and undermining national security in August 2015, charges he had previously denounced as "politically motivated".

Entrepreneurial young Egyptians are helping combat their country's huge plastic waste problem by recycling junk-food wrappers, water bottles and similar garbage that usually ends up in landfills or the Nile.

At a factory on the outskirts of Cairo, run by their startup TileGreen, noisy machines gobble up huge amounts of plastic scraps of all colours, shred them and turn them into a thick liquid.

The sludge -- made from all kinds of plastic, even single-use shopping bags -- is then moulded into dark, compact bricks that are used as outdoor pavers for walkways and garages.

France is "extremely worried" about the health of a French-Irish citizen held in Iran, the foreign ministry said Tuesday, as UN rights experts accused Tehran of institutionalised "hostage-taking".

The developments came as an Iranian newspaper said authorities had arrested a German for allegedly photographing oil facilities in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

European investigators questioned witnesses for eight hours in Beirut Tuesday as part of a probe into Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salemeh and his brother, a judicial official told AFP.

Investigators from France, Germany and Luxembourg began hearing witnesses Monday as part of the case of suspected financial misconduct including possible money laundering and embezzlement.

Iran on Tuesday hailed the resumption of the first direct ministerial talks between arch-rivals Ankara and Damascus since the outbreak of the Syria civil war more than a decade ago.

Ankara's relations with Damascus ruptured after Ankara began backing rebel efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Assad a "terrorist" in 2017 and refused to recognise the Syrian leader's rule.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man Tuesday after he allegedly fired at troops in the occupied West Bank, medical and military officials said.

The Palestinian health ministry said Hamdi Abu Dayyeh, 40, was killed "by Israeli occupation bullets" in the southern town of Halhul.

Israel's army said an assailant shot at soldiers, "who responded with live fire and neutralised him."

An AFP photographer saw the body of a man beside a military tower at the northern entrance to the town, before it was covered by soldiers.

After lighting up football's biggest stages, Cristiano Ronaldo faces a very different reality in Saudi Arabia with smaller stadiums and less exalted teams -- and some very high temperatures.

Ronaldo, 37, says he's embracing the "challenge" of the Saudi Pro League, a step into the unknown for a player who is more used to Real Madrid's heaving Santiago Bernabeu stadium or the "Theatre of Dreams", Manchester United's Old Trafford.

With Egypt's economy in crisis, the currency in freefall and inflation skyrocketing, the poor have been hit hard but the middle class is also teetering on the brink.

"It's like we were hit by an earthquake, suddenly you have to let go of everything," said Manar, a 38-year-old mother of two.

"Now whatever semi-humane life people had has been reduced to thinking about how much bread and eggs cost," she told AFP, asking to be identified only by her first name.

Thousands of members of the Iranian diaspora from all over Europe on Monday demonstrated in the EU parliament host city of Strasbourg to urge the bloc to list Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terror group.

Pressure is growing among opposition exiles and activists for the European Union and United Kingdom to follow the United States and blacklist the Guards over the crackdown on the four months of protests since the death of Mahsa Amini in September.