Israeli troops shot dead a Palestinian militant linked to Hamas during clashes in the West Bank city of Nablus early Thursday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The exchange of fire came just hours after veteran Israeli hawk Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had formed a new government, returning to power as the head of the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history.

The Palestinian health ministry said Ahmed Atef Daraghmeh, 23, a footballer from the nearby town of Tulkarem, sustained bullet wounds to the back and foot.

Yemeni student Abir al-Maqtari dreamt of studying abroad but amid a tightening of restrictions on women echoing religious regimes in Iran and Afghanistan, Huthi forces blocked her from leaving.

The Iran-backed Huthis, who have controlled swathes of the Arab world's poorest country since seizing the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2014, have increasingly enforced travel restrictions on women over the past eight months, residents and activists say.

A Greek MEP at the centre of a graft scandal rocking the European Parliament and linked to Qatar protested her innocence in a Belgian court on Thursday and asked to be released from detention.

Eva Kaili, 44, was "cooperating in an active manner" with the Belgian federal prosecutor's investigation and was requesting to be released under electronic surveillance, her lawyer, Andre Risopoulos, said outside the Brussels courtroom.

The judge, who was only deciding custody terms and not weighing the case itself, was expected to give a decision later in the day.

Hundreds of high profile figures from the global cinema industry called Wednesday for Iran to release actor Taraneh Alidoosti, who was jailed over her support for the country's three-month-old protest movement.

Actors Emma Thompson, Penelope Cruz, Kate Winslet, Ian McKellen and directors Ken Loach and Mike Leigh were among a host of luminaries to sign an open letter demanding the star of "The Salesman" be freed.

Qatar fought a "culture war", corruption claims and accusations over rights abuses in hosting the World Cup but experts say the Gulf state has reinforced its image everywhere except parts of Europe.

The emirate went into the tournament under scrutiny for its treatment of foreign workers and LGBTQ people but one of the final images to emerge from the event was Qatar's emir putting a traditional Arab cloak over the shoulders of Argentina star Lionel Messi.

About 7,000 children of suspected foreign jihadists housed in overcrowded detention camps in northeast Syria are at risk of attack and must be repatriated, an aid organisation warned Wednesday.

Since the Islamic State group's 2019 territorial defeat in Syria, around 56,000 relatives of defeated jihadists have been detained in the Kurdish-controlled Al-Hol and Roj camps.

"These children are trapped in desperate conditions and put at risk on a daily basis," said Matt Sugrue from Save the Children, a charity working in the camps. "There is no time to waste".

Veteran leader Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he had formed a new Israeli government on Wednesday, returning to power as the head of the most right-wing coalition in Israel's history.

Following his November 1 election win, Netanyahu secured a mandate to form a government backed by ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and an extreme-right bloc.

That result left him poised to end Israel's unprecedented era of political gridlock that forced five elections in less than four years, and replace the ideologically disparate coalition that ousted him in 2021.

Morocco is hoping its unprecedented World Cup exploits can help it win friends and influence people, especially among an Arab public opposed to its 2020 rapprochement with Israel.

Support for the Atlas Lions surged as they battled their way to the semi-final of the football World Cup in Qatar -- the first Arab or African team ever to get so far.

Their popularity on the Arab street was helped by players and supporters brandishing Palestinian flags following Moroccan victories, to be seen by millions of live TV viewers worldwide.

Kneeling in front of a turbanned judge in a tiny room at the Ghazni Court of Appeal in eastern Afghanistan, an old man sentenced to death for murder pleads for his life.

The 75-year-old admits to having shot dead a relative -- out of revenge, he says, because of rumours he had sexual relations with his daughter-in-law.

Under eye-for-eye sharia punishments, officially ordered by the Taliban's supreme leader for the first time last month, he faces public execution -- with the sentence to be carried out by a relative of his victim.

US President Joe Biden said last month that the multi-state deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program was "dead," but he would not announce that publicly, according to a video that surfaced Tuesday.

The video, which appears genuine and was apparently taken on November 3 during Biden's visit to California, shows him being asked by a woman to announce that the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is no longer in effect.