The United Nations Security Council on Thursday renewed the mandate for its peacekeeping force in Lebanon for another year after tense debate around the troops' freedom of movement.

The vote, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday but postponed for further negotiations, came only a few hours before the mission's authorization was set to expire.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), in place since 1978, is tasked with creating a buffer between Israel and Lebanon, which are technically at war.

A Palestinian rammed a truck into a group of Israeli soldiers near a checkpoint between Israel and the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing one before being shot dead, Israeli officials said.

Violence linked to the Israel-Palestinian conflict has surged since early this year, and Thursday's attack comes a day after a 14-year-old Palestinian stabbed a civilian at a tram station in Jerusalem.

The truck driver was a 41-year-old Palestinian from the West Bank with a work permit for Israel, Avi Biton, head of police central command, told reporters at the scene of the attack.

An Israeli police officer shot dead a Palestinian teenager who stabbed and wounded a civilian at a light rail station in Jerusalem on Wednesday evening, Israeli police and medics said.

It is the latest incident among surging violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"A suspect armed with a knife committed a terrorist attack near Shivtei Israel light rail station in Jerusalem," Israeli police said in a statement.

"The suspect was neutralised on the spot," it said.

Amnesty International called Wednesday on Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to reveal the fate of people missing in decades of war and unrest, to mark International Day for the Disappeared.

The four Middle East states "have a very large population of missing and disappeared people", Amnesty's Aya Majzoub told AFP at an event with families of the missing in Beirut.

Yet "respective governments have failed to take any action to ensure the rights of the families", she added.

Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has acquired a minority stake in the Professional Fighters League (PFL), the two entities said Wednesday, the latest example of the kingdom's sports investment push.

It is the first deal sealed by SRJ Sports Investments, a new company unveiled earlier this month by the Saudi fund known as the Public Investment Fund (PIF), that aims to draw "major global events" to Saudi Arabia.

Iran is ratcheting up a crackdown ahead of the one-year anniversary of the death of Mahsa Amini, arresting prominent personalities, campaigners and relatives of those killed by security forces in protests last year, activists say.

The death in custody on September 16, 2022 of Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress rules for women, sparked months of protests that included calls for an end to Iran's Islamic system.

Sixty years ago, a crisis hotline for the first time sent a message between the world's superpowers.

Communicated by Washington to Moscow, the message dated August 30, 1963 was more about testing every letter of the English keyboard than about addressing immediate conflict: "THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG'S BACK 1234567890."

But since then, the famed hotline has worked to manage tensions -- or to send warnings -- between Washington and Moscow, whose relations have plunged to new lows over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Cyprus police said Tuesday they have arrested 21 people after violent clashes between Cypriots and migrants near the resort city of Paphos, where authorities have started removing Syrians from a condemned apartment complex.

There has long been friction between asylum-seekers and residents of Chlorakas town.

Tensions flared on Sunday, police said, when a protest against the migrants escalated into splinter groups vandalising and damaging property belonging to the foreign residents, in racially motivated attacks.

The United States is racing to improve its messaging to the developing world as the BRICS group grows, although few in Washington view an immediate threat from the Chinese-backed club.

The BRICS -- Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa -- agreed at a summit last week to add six more members, in what Chinese President Xi Jinping billed as a historic moment among large emerging economies contesting the Western-led order.

Bahraini authorities have agreed to offer prisoners extra rights, including more visiting hours, following a hundreds-strong hunger strike that activists say is the largest in the country's history.

The interior ministry late Monday said it would "increase the duration of visitations" and was looking to increase the time inmates are allowed outdoors -- a step that has so far failed to quell the hunger strike at Jau prison that started in early August.