On the Greek island of Crete, a NATO surveillance plane readies to take off and see what Russia is up to in the Mediterranean, where Moscow and the US have boosted forces amid the war raging in Ukraine.

As Russian forces continue to pound Ukraine, the aim is "to show the Russians that the eastern Mediterranean is a NATO area," says lieutenant Johann, the aircraft's chief officer, who asked that his surname not be used.

The Ukraine war has seen Washington and Moscow boost their presence in the area to levels unseen in a generation.

Standing in front of his shop on one of the main arteries through Jerusalem's Old City, Palestinian grocer Alaa Zorba has a shouting match with an Israeli policeman.

This time around, the argument is brief and doesn't spill over into violence.

But with tensions at boiling point just a few hundred metres (yards) from some of the holiest sites in Islam and Judaism, such incidents can quickly degenerate.

"They put oil on the fire," Zorba said afterwards, as he moved stocks into his shop under the watchful eyes of three Israeli officers.

French authorities have issued an international arrest warrant for Carlos Ghosn, the disgraced auto tycoon who jumped bail in Japan and fled to Lebanon in a sensational getaway, prosecutors told AFP on Friday.

The warrant was issued on Thursday over 15 million euros ($16.3 million) in suspect payments between the Renault-Nissan alliance that Ghosn once headed and an Omani company, Suhail Bahwan Automobiles (SBA), said prosecutors in the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

The allegations involve misuse of company assets, money laundering and corruption.

New clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters broke out on Friday at the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

The Israeli police stormed the compound and fired teargas and rubber-tipped bullets at stone-throwing Palestinian youths, said an AFP photographer on the scene.

The clashes come after a month of deadly violence, as the Jewish festival of Passover overlaps with the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

The violence has sparked international fears of a major escalation, a year after similar unrest led to an 11-day war.

The Saudi doctor still had 15 years left on the loan he used to build his family's "dream" home in Jeddah when bulldozers razed it to the ground, turning his life into "hell".

The operation was part of a $20-billion clearance and construction project that stands to displace half-a-million people in Saudi Arabia's second city –- and has spurred rare expressions of public anger in the kingdom.

Bahrainis with a sweet tooth have long been spoiled for choice between a wide array of dessert franchises, but traditional confectioners still hold their ground, especially during Ramadan.

At the back of his modest shop in the capital Manama, Mohammed Gharib stirs a thick mixture of sugar, saffron and freshly blanched almonds, transforming it into a uniquely Bahraini version of the ubiquitous Middle Eastern dessert: halva.

Spanish authorities said Thursday they had arrested and then granted conditional release to a Portuguese man wanted by Interpol over the 2020 Beirut port blast that killed over 200 people.

Jorge Moreira, 43, was arrested at Madrid airport on Wednesday after he arrived on a flight from Chile's capital Santiago, a Spanish police spokesman said.

He had arrived in Santiago earlier on a flight from Spain but was prevented from entering the country and put on a plane back to Madrid in coordination with Interpol, Chilean police said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday encouraged Yemen's new leader to work toward a lasting peace amid rare bright spots after seven years of devastating war.

Blinken spoke by telephone with Rashad al-Alimi, who heads a new council running the Saudi-backed government after the former president handed over power.

Blinken voiced support for a UN-brokered two-month truce between the government and Iranian-backed Huthi rebels that has largely held since April 2, the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Sudanese artist Mutaz al-Fateh creates vibrant pictures with special ingredients; the paint he uses is made with colours derived from coffee grounds, tea leaves and shavings of fruit peel.

"I have a special vision in art," the 39-year-old said, surrounded by his eclectic art hung on the walls of his gallery in the capital Khartoum. "I am particularly interested in using natural materials."

Many of his paintings feature colours derived from the fruits of the doum palm tree, and ground up fruit from the bulbous baobab tree.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip and Israeli warplanes exchanged fire Thursday in the biggest escalation in months, followed by fresh violence at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque.

Israel carried out air strikes in central Gaza after midnight, hours after a rocket fired by militants hit the garden of a house in southern Israel -- the first such fire to hit the Jewish state since January.

The military said it had hit an underground rocket factory, prompting another volley of rockets from the impoverished territory, run by Islamist movement Hamas.