Australia's defending Dakar Rally motorbike champion Daniel Sanders moved into the overall lead after winning Monday's second stage in Saudi Arabia.
The 31-year-old covered the 518km route from Yanbu to Al Ula in 4hrs 13mins 37 seconds to cross the line 1min 35s clear of KTM teammate Edgar Canet, who lost time with a couple of minor crashes.
American Ricky Brabec, the 2024 winner, completed the day's podium for Honda.
Jan 5 (Reuters) - U.S.-mediated talks between Syria and Israel have resumed after an interruption of several months, Syria's state news agency SANA reported on Monday, with Damascus seeking withdrawal of Israeli troops from territory seized after the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
SANA, citing a Syrian government source, said the Syrian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani and intelligence chief Hussein al-Salama. The resumption of the talks reflects a push by Damascus to reclaim what it describes as its non-negotiable national rights, the source said.
Destroyed and looted in the early months of Sudan's war, the national museum in Khartoum is now welcoming virtual visitors after months of painstaking effort to digitally recreate its collection.
At the museum itself, almost nothing remains of the 100,000 artefacts it had stored since its construction in the 1950s.
Only pieces too heavy for looters to haul off, like the massive granite statue of the Kush Pharaoh Taharqa and frescoes relocated from temples during the building of the Aswan Dam, are still present on site.
Iran will offer no leniency to "rioters", though the public has a right to demonstrate, the head of the country's judiciary said on Monday, following more than a week of sometimes-deadly protests.
The remarks came after US President Donald Trump warned Iran would "get hit very hard by the United States" if the authorities killed more demonstrators.
Protests erupted on December 28 when shopkeepers in capital Tehran staged a strike over high prices and economic stagnation. They have since spread to other cities and expanded to include political demands.
ANKARA, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Turkey's foreign minister will stress the "strategic priority" of maintaining security in the Black Sea at a summit on Ukraine in Paris this week, a Turkish Foreign Ministry source said on Monday.
French President Emmanuel Macron convened a meeting of the "Coalition of the Willing" on Tuesday. The group, led by Britain and France, includes more than 30 nations.
The source said Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan would attend the meeting and would repeat Turkey's position on the need for "results-oriented" steps to end the war.
Habibullah set off from his home in western Afghanistan determined to find work in Iran, only for the 15-year-old to freeze to death while walking across the mountainous frontier.
"He was forced to go, to bring food for the family," his mother, Mah Jan, told AFP at her mud home in Ghunjan village.
"We have no food to eat, we have no clothes to wear. The house in which I live has no electricity, no water. I have no proper window, nothing to burn for heating," she added, clutching a photo of her son.
ZURICH, Jan 4 (Reuters) - The last 16 people who died in the New Year's Eve bar fire at the Swiss mountain resort of Crans-Montana have been identified, police said on Sunday.
This means all 40 victims of the blaze, which broke out at the Constellation bar early on January 1, have now been identified, Swiss police said.
Police said they would not give details of their identities.
(Reporting by John RevillEditing by Ros Russell)
Attacks by Sudan's army and its paramilitary foes on two towns in the western Darfur region over the past week have killed 114 people, medical sources told AFP Sunday.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which in October seized the army's last holdout position in Darfur.
The RSF has since pushed west to the Chadian border and east through the vast Kordofan region, where a drone strike on the North Kordofan capital of El-Obeid on Sunday caused a blackout in the key army-controlled city.
By Ahmed Elimam and Maha El Dahan
DUBAI, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Yemen's Saudi-backed government on Sunday accused UAE-backed southern separatists of cutting off the port city of Aden and warned it would "take all necessary measures" after recapturing territory from them in the east on Saturday.
The separatists denied having restricted movement into Aden, but the government accusations indicate that hostility between the sides persists despite proposals for a dialogue that had raised hopes of a negotiated solution to the crisis.
New deadly clashes between protesters and security forces erupted in Iran, rights groups and local media said Sunday, as demonstrations first sparked by anger over the rising cost of living entered a second week.
At least 12 people, including members of the security forces, have been killed since the protests kicked off with a shopkeepers' strike in Tehran on December 28, according to a toll based on official reports.
