A group of countries led by Canada on Wednesday called for an arbitrator to settle claims against Iran over its shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger plane in January 2020.
The move is a first step in possibly bringing a case against Iran at the International Court of Justice, which victims' families have long demanded.
"Those who lost loved ones in the downing of PS752 deserve justice," Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly tweeted.
Iran is still open to negotiations for reviving a nuclear deal with global powers but warned on Wednesday it would alter course if the West doesn't change its behaviour.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian made the comments on the sidelines of a visit to Oman, a Gulf state which played a mediating role in the build-up to the original 2015 agreement.
That deal between Tehran and global powers was designed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Tehran has always denied such a goal.
Saudi Arabia on Wednesday said it had seized nearly 30 tonnes of the mildly narcotic shrub khat this month, as part of a larger drug crackdown by the oil-rich kingdom.
Khat, or qat, is a leaf which is packed into the cheek and slowly chewed, releasing chemicals similar to amphetamines and resulting in a mild high.
It is very popular in Yemen and Horn of Africa countries like Ethiopia and Somalia.
Kuwait, one of the hottest countries on Earth, has been hit by a rare hail storm that delighted children and their parents, with images of the winter white shared widely on social media Wednesday.
"We have not seen so much hail during the winter season in 15 years," Muhammad Karam, a former director of Kuwait's meteorological department, told AFP.
Pictures and videos of southern roads partially blanketed in hail and ice spread online to celebrate the rare weather event.
Moroccan director Maryam Touzani hopes her latest film, shortlisted for an Oscar, will provoke "a healthy, much-needed debate" around LGBTQ rights and challenge taboos in the conservative country.
"The Blue Caftan" tells the story of Halim and his wife Mina, a couple who make and sell traditional robes in one of Morocco's oldest souks.
Their relationship is rocked by the arrival of a handsome young apprentice -- and Halim's attraction to him.
With foreign workers making up the vast bulk of private sector jobs in the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf's second-largest economy wants to boost opportunities for its own citizens.
The UAE -- like other oil-rich Arab Gulf states -- has often used the public sector as an employment vehicle for its nationals.
But times are changing, said 34-year-old Emirati researcher Khalifa al-Suwaidi, who has himself been looking for a private sector job since quitting a government post in June.
French authorities were Tuesday investigating as suicide the drowning of an Iranian man in the southeastern city of Lyon who had said on social media he was going to kill himself to draw attention to the protest crackdown in Iran.
Mohammad Moradi, 38, was found in the Rhone river that flows through the centre of Lyon late on Monday, a police source, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
Emergency services intervened but were unable to resuscitate him on the riverbank, the source added.
The deadly attack on Kurds in Paris last week has highlighted the long plight of the non-Arab ethnic group of between 25 and 35 million people who remain stateless.
The Kurds inhabit largely mountainous regions across southeastern Turkey through northern Syria and Iraq to central Iran. They are often described as the world's largest people without a state.
Many have been internally displaced in the Middle East because of decades of bitter conflicts, while others have been forced to flee persecution to the West, especially Western Europe.
Tunisian rights groups on Tuesday accused the electoral authority of "threatening" press freedom, after it sued bloggers and media outlets for alleged violations during a poll on a new constitution.
Last week, the ISIE elections authority filed 24 legal complaints against media organisations and bloggers in the North African nation, accusing them of insults, "attacking the dignity of voters", spreading false news and receiving foreign funds.
President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday Iran would show "no mercy" towards "hostile" opponents of the Islamic republic, gripped by more than 100 days of protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death.
The "riots", as Tehran generally refers to them, were triggered by the September 16 death in custody of Iranian-Kurdish Amini, 22, after her arrest for an alleged breach of the strict dress code for women.
Addressing a crowd in Tehran, Raisi accused "hypocrites, monarchists and all anti-revolutionary currents".
