An election in crisis-hit Lebanon appears to have dealt a setback to the biggest bloc, led by the Iran-backed Shiite Muslim Hezbollah party, and boosted reformists, provisional results showed Monday.
Counting was ongoing and official results were only available for 99 of the 128 seats up for grabs a little before midnight (2100 GMT), fuelling opposition fears of foul play in some of the closest races.
The United States will remove a Jewish extremist group linked to late rabbi Meir Kahane as well as a Palestinian militant group from a terror blacklist after years without violence, an official said Sunday.
The State Department designated Kahane Chai as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, three years after its supporter Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.
The group was founded by Kahane, a US-born rabbi and former Israeli MP who advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and was assassinated in New York in 1990.
A Briton and a German allegedly found with ancient pottery shards in their luggage told the start of their trial Sunday in Iraq that they had no intention of breaking the law.
James Fitton, 66, a retired British geologist, and Volker Waldmann, 60, a Berlin psychologist, appeared dressed in the yellow uniform of detainees for the two-hour hearing at a Baghdad criminal court.
The two men, who did not know each other before they travelled to Iraq on an organised tour, were arrested March 20 at Baghdad airport.
After voting in Lebanon's elections Sunday, Beirut blast survivor Nessrin hoped the ink on her finger would be a toe in the door of parliament for new candidates fighting corruption.
The capital's Karantina district where she cast her ballot was one of the worst hit by the August 2020 explosion that killed more than 200 people, wounded thousands and devastated swathes of the city.
Palestinians rallied Sunday to mark the "Nakba," or catastrophe, 74 years after Israel's creation, with condemnation spreading over a police raid on the funeral of a slain journalist.
The annual demonstrations across the occupied West Bank, annexed east Jerusalem and inside Israel came with tensions high over the killing of 51-year-old Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh.
The United Arab Emirate's new president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, met his French and British counterparts Sunday as world leaders offered congratulations and paid tribute to his late predecessor.
French President Emmanuel Macron, on the maiden foreign trip of his second term, was the first of a number of Western leaders to meet "MBZ", the oil-rich Gulf state's long-time de facto ruler who was appointed on Saturday, a day after the death of his ailing half-brother Sheikh Khalifa.
In an Iraqi province where unemployment is about 40 percent, a lucky few hoped to find work Sunday at a university job fair attended by French firms alongside local companies.
The three-day event is taking place at the University of Mosul in Iraq's war-ravaged second city, where reconstruction has been slow five years after the Iraqi army backed by US-led coalition air strikes pushed out Islamic State jihadists.
Saudi Aramco on Sunday posted an 82-percent jump in first quarter profits, buoyed by a global surge in oil prices that has made it the world's most valuable company.
The announcement continued a string of recent positive economic news for Saudi Arabia, where a booming oil sector is fuelling the fastest growth rate in a decade.
Aramco's net income of $39.5 billion was up from $21.7 billion compared with the same period in 2021, "primarily driven by higher crude oil prices and volumes sold, and improved downstream margins," it said in a press release.
The UAE's new president Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan held talks Sunday with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron as world leaders streamed in to Abu Dhabi to pay tribute to his predecessor.
Macron, who was re-elected this month, expressed his condolences to Sheikh Mohamed following the death of his half-brother Sheikh Khalifa, who died on Friday following a long illness.
Turnout was low as Lebanon held its first election Sunday since a painful economic crisis dragged it to the brink of becoming a failed state.
The vote is seen as a major test for opposition groups bent on ousting the ruling elite. But few observers expected a seismic shift, with all levers of political power firmly in the hands of traditional sectarian parties and an electoral system seen as rigged in their favour.
