Edouard Mendy joined Al-Ahli on Wednesday as the Senegal goalkeeper became the third player to leave Chelsea for Saudi Arabia since the end of the season.

Mendy is reported to have cost Al-Ahli around £16 million ($20 million) after he opted to leave the Premier League club having lost his place to Kepa Arrizabalaga in the second half of last term.

"Welcome Mendy... best goalkeeper in the world," Al-Ahli posted on social media accompanied by a video clip of the 31-year-old putting pen to paper on his contract.

Iran has taken Canada to the International Court of Justice for allowing victims of alleged terror attacks to claim damages from Tehran, the UN's top tribunal said on Wednesday.

Tehran's case claims that Ottawa, which listed the Islamic Republic as a sponsor of terrorism in 2012, had violated Iran's state immunity.

Iran asked the Hague-based ICJ to make Canada overturn a law passed in the same year that allows victims to collect damages from state terror sponsors in Canadian civil courts.

Hundreds gathered in the Sudanese capital Khartoum Wednesday to pray for peace on the first day of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, but gunfire shattered the brief respite, residents said.

Witnesses in the capital's twin city of Omdurman late Wednesday reported air strikes and anti-aircraft fire, despite separate unilateral truces announced by the warring generals for the holiday.

"The country can't take any more of this," Khartoum resident Kazem Abdel Baqi told AFP earlier in the day.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that no new nuclear agreement was on the table with Iran, after quiet new diplomacy between the adversaries.

"There is no agreement in the offing, even as we continue to be willing to explore diplomatic paths," Blinken said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

"We'll see by their actions," Blinken said of the future relationship, calling on Iran to choose to "not take actions that further escalate the tensions" with the United States and in the Middle East.

Alsafi Mansur's "lifelong" wish to take part in the hajj pilgrimage came true this year, after Saudi Arabia lifted curbs that kept the elderly away from the compulsory Islamic ritual.

"I feared that I would die before performing hajj," said the 71-year-old Libyan national, carrying his medication along for the trip.

"Hajj has been a lifelong wish for me," the father-of-seven said at Mount Arafat, praying under temperatures that peaked at 48 degrees Celsius (118.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.

In the decade since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seized power, Egypt has built dozens of motorways that zigzag across Cairo -- crushing entire neighbourhoods, precious green spaces and historic gravesites.

The administration of Sisi, a former army general who rose to the presidency in 2013 after deposing Mohamed Morsi, has placed a massive premium on construction projects, in what experts call a "bulldozer" development policy.

Vast crowds of worshippers hurled pebbles in the "stoning of the devil" ritual Wednesday as the biggest hajj pilgrimage since the Covid pandemic draws to a close in Saudi Arabia.

From dawn in Mina, hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims began pelting three concrete monoliths representing Satan under soaring temperatures before heading to Mecca for a final "tawaf" -- circling the Kaaba, the giant black cube at the Grand Mosque.

Fighting raged in the Sudanese capital on Tuesday, the eve of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday, after paramilitaries seized Khartoum's main police base.

Fighting in the city between the army led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo is now concentrated around military bases.

At the same time in Sudan's west, the conflict is worsening to "alarming levels" in Darfur, the United Nations warned.

As climate change and global population growth pose ever greater challenges for agriculture, Israeli technology offers a wealth of inventions and advanced tools to help farmers adapt.

At an avocado orchard in a kibbutz in central Israel, a tractor slowly pulls a device through the trees.

Flag-sized attachments that evoke canoe paddles on the mobile platform gently stroke the plants to draw the pollen using an electrostatic charge, then let them rub off on the next row of trees.

If a landmark reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran has eased tensions in the Gulf, clouds have also lifted at the hajj pilgrimage, where Iranian visitors finally feel welcome again.

Seven years of enmity between the Sunni and Shiite powers had made for a cool reception for Iranian pilgrims joining worshippers from around the world for the massive event.

But at the current hajj, held three months after Riyadh and Tehran agreed to repair relations, the atmosphere is suddenly very different.