Iran said Thursday that it remains "serious" about reaching a revived nuclear deal with major powers that ends economic sanctions and to which the United States is again a party.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was speaking at a joint news conference with visiting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov as talks between the parties in Vienna remain stalled.

"The nuclear negotiations train has reached difficult stops as they near the end," Amir-Abdollahian said.

Firefighting aircraft from both sides of divided Cyprus were joined by Israeli and British planes on Thursday battling a blaze that has scorched mountainsides and forced the evacuation of villages.

Fanned by strong winds, the fire spread rapidly overnight after breaking out earlier in the week in the Kantara area of the Kyrenia mountain range in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot statelet of northern Cyprus, media reports said.

There has been no immediate report of any casualties.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday replaced its intelligence chief Hossein Taeb, who had held the position for more than 12 years, the Guards said in a statement.

"The Guards' chief Major General Hossein Salami appointed General Mohammad Kazemi as the new head of the IRGC Intelligence Organisation," Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif said in the statement.

Salami also appointed Taeb, who is a cleric, as his own adviser, according to the statement.

Israel's incoming prime minister on Thursday thanked Turkey for thwarting an Iranian assassination plot against its tourists in Istanbul that prompted an urgent call for the Jewish state's citizens to return home.

The comments from Israel's visiting Foreign Minister Yair Lapid -- set to assume the helm of a caretaker government in the coming days -- came after Turkey reported detaining eight members of the alleged Iranian cell.

The global food crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine will kill millions by leaving the hungriest more vulnerable to infectious diseases, potentially triggering the world's next health catastrophe, the head of a major aid organisation has warned.

A Russian naval blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports has stopped grain shipments from the world's fourth-largest exporter of wheat and corn, raising the spectre of shortages and hunger in low-income countries.

When Saudi doctor Safi took a new job at a hospital in the capital, she decided to offset her standard white lab coat with a look she once would have considered dramatic.

Walking into a Riyadh salon, she ordered the hairdresser to chop her long, wavy locks all the way up to her neck, a style increasingly in vogue among working women in the conservative kingdom.

A senior US official hinted Wednesday that more Arab nations are looking to make gestures to improve relations with Israel when President Joe Biden visits the region next month.

Biden will travel from July 13 to 16 to Israel, the West Bank and to a regional meeting in Saudi Arabia, which former US president Donald Trump assiduously courted in hopes the kingdom home to Islam's holiest sites would recognize the Jewish state.

Damascus airport is due to reopen on Thursday, almost two weeks after Israeli strikes rendered its runways unusable, the Syrian transport ministry said.

The Syrian authorities had to suspend flights and undertake major repairs after Israeli air strikes on June 10 had damaged the runways, the control tower, reception rooms and hangars.

"Damascus International Airport is back in service as of tomorrow," the Syrian transport ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

Lebanon's ailing economy should receive a welcome injection of more than $3 billion thanks to a rebound in tourist arrivals over the summer, the tourism minister said Wednesday.

Lebanon defaulted on its debt in 2020, the local currency has lost around 90 percent of its value on the black market, and the UN now considers four in five Lebanese to be poor.

While soaring inflation is ravaging households with incomes in Lebanese pounds, the informal exchange rate makes prices attractive to most tourists.

Authorities in Iran have banned an Iranian movie about the struggles of a family in the sanctions-hit country after it was feted at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

"Leila's Brothers" by director Saeed Roustaee has been banned until further notice by the Cinema Organisation of Iran, Culture Minister Mohammad-Mehdi Esmaili told state news agency IRNA.

The movie "broke the rules by being entered at international film festivals without authorisation," the COI said.