By Christine Chen

SYDNEY, May 25 (Reuters) - Antisemitism in Australia was left unchecked after the October 2023 outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, fuelling violence against Jewish people, the country's spy chief told an inquiry into the Bondi Beach mass shooting on Monday.

The comments came during public hearings in the wide-ranging inquiry known as a ​Royal Commission that focus on the events leading up to last December's Bondi attack, which killed 15 attending a Jewish Hanukkah celebration.

By Saad Sayeed and Mubasher Bukhari

CHAKWAL, Pakistan, May 25 (Reuters) - In a cluster of villages in Pakistan's largely rural Chakwal district, more than 100 Shi'ite Muslims have returned from the United Arab Emirates without jobs, luggage or access to the savings they spent years building abroad.

They are among potentially thousands of Shi'ites deported from the UAE to Pakistan during the Iran war, raising alarm in Pakistan's Shi'ite community and prompting Human Rights Watch to investigate.

May 25 (Reuters) - Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday the U.S. will either have a good agreement with Iran or deal with the country "another way."

The U.S. will give diplomacy every chance to succeed before exploring the "alternatives," Rubio told reporters in New Delhi.

There is a "pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait, get the strait open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off," Rubio said.

By Stefica Bikesh and Cordelia Hsu

SYDNEY, May 25 (Reuters) - Australian activists detained by Israel while on a flotilla attempting to deliver aid to Gaza have returned home, with organisers alleging abuse, sexual assault, and beatings, that left some detainees in hospital.

Israel's prison service has denied the allegations, which Reuters could not independently verify.

Oil prices fell and Asian stocks climbed on Monday over hopes a deal between the United States and Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz could be brokered.

The price of North Sea Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate slipped close to five percent to $99.41 and $92.49 a barrel respectively.

The United States and Iran appear closer than ever to a deal that would end the war that has ravaged the Middle East since late February, sending energy prices soaring and stoking global inflation.

To avoid the punishing sun, Inas Gamal abandoned her ambitious plan of spending the days ahead of the hajj praying in Mecca's Grand Mosque and retreated to the comfort of an air-conditioned hotel room to perform her daytime prayers.

Despite travelling all the way from Egypt for the annual pilgrimage, Gamal said it was just too hot to spend much time outside during the day, where temperatures crossed 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).

"It's very hot, much hotter than I imagined," the mother of four, who is performing the hajj for the first time, told AFP.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused Hezbollah in a statement Sunday of trying to plunge Lebanon "back into chaos."

Rubio denounced what he called Hezbollah's "reckless call to overthrow Lebanon's democratically elected government" and said the pro-Iran armed group was "actively trying to drag Lebanon back into chaos and destruction."

May 24 (Reuters) - The foreign ministers of the Group of Eight Arab-Islamic states on Sunday strongly condemned the actions of far-right Israeli police minister Itamar Ben-Gvir towards participants in the Gaza-bound flotilla while they were in Israeli detention.

Governments have expressed outrage after Ben-Gvir posted a video in which he taunted activists who were pinned to the ground. Some of the detainees, who had intended to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza, later alleged that they were physically assaulted in detention, which Israel's prison service denied.

May 24 (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers appearing on Sunday morning talk shows split sharply over a potential deal to end the Iran war, with Republicans mostly backing the publicly reported contours of an agreement being negotiated by President Donald Trump and Democrats dismissing it as accomplishing little.

Tehran on Tuesday accused Washington of breaching their ceasefire and warned it was ready to retaliate after overnight US strikes, while Israeli bombardment in Lebanon left dozens dead, threatening an increasingly fragile truce there.

The Brent benchmark oil price jumped up by more than three percent after US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced the new wave of bombings targeting Iranian missile sites and mine-laying boats, while China urged both sides to respect the truce and to resolve their dispute peacefully.