The European Union said Friday it had unblocked stalled talks with Iran after a mission to Tehran but the United States raised doubts on whether it was enough to revive a nuclear deal.

EU envoy Enrique Mora visited Tehran this week in a bid to help restart the 2015 nuclear deal, two months after slow-moving negotiations in Vienna to bring Iran and the United States back into compliance broke off.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that the trip had gone "better than expected".

A British-Iranian woman freed after six years' imprisonment in Tehran rebuked Prime Minister Boris Johnson in person on Friday after his loose language was used against her by the Islamic regime.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe finally returned home in March along with a fellow dual national, after Britain agreed to pay a longstanding debt to Iran.

Johnson was accused of lengthening her ordeal when, as foreign secretary in 2017, he wrongly claimed that she had been training journalists at the time of her arrest in 2016.

Thousands of people packed Jerusalem's Old City on Friday for the burial of veteran Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh, after Israeli police stormed the funeral procession.

Television footage showed pallbearers struggling to stop Abu Akleh's coffin from falling to the ground as baton-wielding police officers charged towards them, grabbing Palestinian flags from mourners.

Washington said it was "deeply troubled" by the scenes, while the European Union said it was "appalled" by the "unnecessary force."

Lebanese activists Friday rolled out mock banknotes featuring paintings of a gutted central bank or the Beirut port explosion to denounce high-level corruption that has helped to wreck the country.

The collapse of the Lebanese pound and frozen bank accounts have left Lebanon with a confusing currency system, with a multitude of exchange rates applying to various situations in daily life.

The dollars stuck in accounts that citizens can only withdraw in Lebanese pounds at a fraction of their original value are known locally as "lollars".

EU envoy Enrique Mora said Friday he called for the release on "humanitarian grounds" of an Iranian-Swedish academic on death row, during a mission to Tehran to help revive Iran's 2015 nuclear pact.

Mora, the European Union's coordinator for talks between Iran and major world powers to restore the deal, met Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri, who is also deputy foreign minister, on Wednesday and Thursday, state media said.

Mora tweeted after his departure that he had raised the case of the academic, Ahmedreza Djalali.

UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan died Friday aged 73 after a years-long battle with illness, triggering a period of mourning and a handover of power in the oil-rich Gulf state.

Sheikh Khalifa, who was in office during a time of rocketing fortunes for the United Arab Emirates but was rarely seen in public, was laid to rest in Abu Dhabi's Al Bateen Cemetery just hours after his death was announced, in accordance with Muslim tradition.

Emirates airline announced a "significantly reduced" annual loss of $1.1 billion dollars on Friday, five times lower than a year before, as pandemic travel restrictions ease.

Losses came in at 3.9 billion dirhams ($1.1 billion) in the 2021-2022 financial year to March, with revenues up 91 percent, as the airline expanded its global capacity and reinstated flights, Emirates said in a statement.

The Middle East's largest carrier said it received a capital injection of $954 million from its owner, the government of Dubai, to help it survive the crisis.

Hundreds of people have taken to the streets in cities across Iran to protest the government's decision to raise the prices of essential goods, state media reported Friday.

Earlier this week, President Ebrahim Raisi announced a series of measures to tackle the country's economic woes, including changing a subsidy system and increasing the prices of several staples including cooking oil, chicken and eggs.

Israel bolstered security in Jerusalem ahead of the funeral on Friday of veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, two days after she was killed during an Israeli army raid.

Israel and the Palestinians have traded blame over the fatal shooting of the 51-year-old Palestinian-American during clashes in the Jenin refugee camp.

The body of Abu Akleh, a Palestinian Christian born in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, was transferred to the holy city from the occupied West Bank.

Food delivery drivers have staged rare strikes in Dubai, a renowned temple of luxury where fuel prices have spiralled on the back of global inflation sparked by the Ukraine war.

The riders, all of whom are foreigners mostly from south Asia, are demanding better pay and have held two strikes this month in the energy-rich Gulf state where industrial action is rare.

"It is impossible to survive in Dubai on what we make," said a 28-year-old Pakistani driver, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.