Iran dismissed as "false" Friday a claim by the British and US navies that Iranian weapons had been seized from a smuggling boat apparently headed to Yemen.
The foreign ministry accused the Western allies of attempting to divert attention from their own arming of a Saudi-led coalition that has waged a devastating campaign against Yemen's Iran-backed rebels since 2015.
The head of one of Lebanon's top security agencies retired Friday without a replacement, a casualty of the political and institutional paralysis which is stoking fears of a broader breakdown.
"The country is in a state of almost total disintegration," said analyst Karim Bitar.
"We are seeing the collapse of all state institutions that were still holding up."
Lebanon is navigating a devastating economic crisis that has plunged more than 80 percent of the population into poverty, according to the United Nations.
UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi arrived in Tehran Friday for talks after his agency's inspectors in Iran found uranium particles enriched to just under weapons-grade level.
The visit by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency comes with the Vienna-based organisation seeking Iran's increased cooperation over its nuclear activities.
Grossi was greeted at the airport by Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, and later met with its head, Mohammad Eslami.
Details of their discussion were not immediately available.
Four astronauts entered the International Space Station on Friday after their SpaceX Dragon Crew-6 mission successfully docked, a NASA livestream showed.
The SpaceX Dragon Endeavour spacecraft arrived at the orbiting station at 0640 GMT on Friday, the US space agency said in a statement.
NASA's Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg, Russia's Andrey Fedyaev and Sultan al-Neyadi of the United Arab Emirates entered the station about two hours later, the livestream showed.
Turkey's inflation rate slowed for a fourth straight month in February, data showed Friday, but remained in double-digits ahead of elections where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's economic record will be a key issue for voters.
The inflation report comes as the government prepares to pour billions of dollars into rebuilding huge swathes of Turkey following the massive earthquake that struck on February 6.
UN countries appeared Friday to be nearing an agreement on a long-awaited treaty to protect the high seas, a fragile and vital treasure that covers nearly half the planet.
After more than 15 years of informal and then formal talks, negotiators are coming to the end of two more weeks of discussions, the third "final" session in less than a year.
Egypt's oil ministry has announced a rise in the price of fuel effective Thursday, as the Arab world's most populous nation struggles with inflation and is sapped dry of dollars.
The Egyptian economy was hit hard after Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine unsettled global investors, leading them to pull billions out of the North African country.
The war has sent wheat prices spiralling, heavily impacting Egypt -- one of the world's largest grain importers -- and piling pressure on its foreign currency reserves.
Scientists have discovered a hidden passage inside Egypt's Great Pyramid, the authorities announced on Thursday, part of a seven-year international research project.
The passage is nine metres (30 feet) in length and more than two metres in width, the antiquities ministry said in a statement.
Egypt's Tourism and Antiquities Minister Ahmed Issa told reporters at the ancient site in Giza also known as the Khufu, or Cheops, pyramid, that the "gabled corridor" with a triangular ceiling "was found on the northern face of the Great Pyramid of King Khufu".
Leading Syrian academic and opposition figure Bassma Kodmani died in Paris on Thursday aged 64 after a long battle with cancer, her family told AFP.
Born in Damascus in 1958, she spent a large part of her life in exile and was also a French citizen.
Her sister, journalist Hala Kodmani, said she died of cancer in hospital in the French capital, where she lived.
Kodmani was a leading member of the Syrian opposition after peaceful protests broke out in the country in 2011.
Wielding long sticks and with their faces wrapped in Palestinian chequered keffiyeh scarves, young men set out on a night patrol to guard their village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Each night, the team gathers at Turmus Ayya in the north of the West Bank, ready to raise the alarm in the event of a raid by Israeli settlers, who have set up bases in outposts around the village.
"We do not intend to attack anyone -- we work to defend our people and our village, our home, our land and our honour," one said, requesting anonymity for fear of arrest by Israeli forces.
