A US judge Friday ordered the military chief of eastern Libya, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, to compensate Libyan plaintiffs who allege he ordered the torture and extrajudicial killings of their family members.
The federal judge in the state of Virginia, where Haftar lived before returning to Libya, ruled that he had not cooperated with the court and that by "default" was ordered to pay damages to the families.
At least seven people have been killed in the United Arab Emirates after unseasonable downpours triggered flash flooding in eastern districts of the normally parched Gulf state, authorities said.
"We regret to announce that six people of Asian nationalities have been found dead as a result of the floods," the interior ministry's chief of central operations, Ali al-Tunaiji, said.
The ministry later announced the death of a seventh Asian migrant.
Two days of flooding near the Iranian capital have killed at least 24 people and another 19 are still missing, officials said on Friday.
"Because of strong rain and floods in the village of Emamzadeh Davoud to the west and the Firouzkouh, Roudehen and Damavand regions east of Tehran, 24 people are dead," a Red Crescent statement said.
"A search and rescue operation for 19 missing persons is ongoing," it added.
A Palestinian teenager was killed on Friday in clashes with the Israeli army in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Amjad Nashaat Abu Alia, 16, "died of critical wounds sustained by live bullets in the chest", during clashes near the village of Al-Mughayer, close to Ramallah, the ministry said in a statement.
An AFP photographer at the scene reported 300 to 400 Palestinians had gathered for a protest march against Israeli settlement expansion in the area.
Gulf state Bahrain has joined other Middle Eastern countries in imposing a cinema ban on the fourth instalment of superhero saga Thor, a Hollywood blockbuster featuring gay characters.
"The ministry of information has decided to halt projection of one of the films showing in cinema halls for the sake of preserving and safeguarding society's moral values," the ministry said in a brief statement late Thursday.
The ministry did not specify the name of the film banned, but screenings of "Thor: Love and Thunder" have halted.
French leader Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman agreed to work "to ease the effects" of the Ukraine war, Macron's office said Friday, after talks in Paris that marked the full diplomatic rehabilitation of the Saudi leader.
Like US President Joe Biden who visited Riyadh earlier this month, Macron had been keen to secure extra oil production from the de facto Saudi leader who was a pariah in the West until recently.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to talks at the Elysee Palace in Paris with a long handshake, despite outrage from rights groups over their meeting.
Macron warmly greeted the kingdom's de-facto ruler ahead of a dinner, AFP TV pictures showed, defying objections from activists the talks are deeply inappropriate less than four years after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
Moscow's former chief rabbi now living in exile in Israel warned Thursday of "dark clouds on the horizon" for Russian Jews, as ties between the two countries deteriorate over the Ukraine war.
Pinchas Goldschmidt, who left Russia in March over opposition to the conflict, told reporters that "the Jewish community was pressured... to openly support the war. Our community did not support the war."
The storming of Iraq's parliament by hundreds of supporters of populist Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has piled pressure on his political opponents working to form a government nearly 10 months after an election.
"Neither side is willing to make any concessions," political scientist Ali al-Baidar said Thursday, one day after crowds breached Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and staged a parliamentary sit-in, waving flags and demanding change.
During his trip to France to meet President Emmanuel Macron, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is staying at a lavish chateau dubbed "the world's most expensive home" when he purchased it in 2015.
The Chateau Louis XIV in Louveciennes outside Paris is a new-build mansion intended to mimic the extravagant luxury of the nearby Versailles Palace, once the seat of the French royal family.
