By Timour Azhari

RIYADH (Reuters) -Saudi Arabia plans imminently to boost commercial ties with Lebanon after Lebanese authorities demonstrated "efficacy" in curbing drug smuggling to the kingdom over the past months, a senior Saudi official said on Thursday.

Ties between Riyadh and Beirut have been strained for years due to the power of Iran-backed Hezbollah over Lebanese political and security affairs, but the kingdom sees an opening after the group was severely weakened by war with Israel last year.

Survivors of the bloody takeover of El-Fasher walked for days through the desert, past bodies and armed men who humiliated them, desperate to escape the Sudanese city now overrun by paramilitary forces.

Several gave harrowing accounts to AFP, describing scenes of terror as nearly 100,000 people fled the last army stronghold in western Darfur after its fall to Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on October 26.

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada's domestic spy agency this year foiled potentially lethal threats by Iran directed against people whom Tehran sees as enemies, the agency's head said in a rare speech on Thursday.

Dan Rogers, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, also said his agents had blocked attempts by Russia to illegally acquire Canadian goods and technologies.

Rogers, appointed in February, spoke as he presented an annual update on security challenges facing Canada. CSIS directors seldom appear in public.

The Palestinian Authority said Thursday that Israeli soldiers had killed two 15-year-olds in the occupied West Bank, while Israel called them "terrorists" attempting to carry out an attack.

Settler violence has surged in recent weeks across the West Bank, drawing international condemnation and even rare criticism from within the Israeli military and government.

MrBeast, the world's most followed YouTuber with over 450 million subscribers, opened a temporary amusement park in Riyadh on Thursday, the latest celebrity drawn to Saudi Arabia as it aspires to become a major entertainment hub.

Eager for a chance to meet the social media star, families and teenagers gathered at "Beast Land", a venue featuring obstacle course-like challenges similar to those in his popular videos where contestants compete for massive pay days.

By Joan Faus

BARCELONA (Reuters) -Nineteen boats carrying around 360 people reached Spain's Balearic Islands in the past two days, the latest surge in arrivals defying attempts by authorities to curb the fastest-growing migratory route into the European Union.

Arrivals via the Western Mediterranean route - primarily boats departing Algeria for Spain - rose 27% in January-October compared with the same period last year, the steepest increase among routes, even as overall arrivals to the EU fell 22%, according to data from EU border agency Frontex.

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and the United States shipped vast amounts of oil to Israel during its two-year Gaza offensive, according to a report by Oil Change International, which says the same fossil-fuel system driving climate change is also enabling "genocide."

Released at the UN climate summit in Brazil, the analysis titled "Behind the Barrel" found that 25 countries were responsible for 323 shipments of crude and refined petroleum products totaling 21.2 million tonnes between November 1, 2023, and October 1, 2025.

ANKARA (Reuters) -President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday that Turkey believes the most realistic way to resolve political deadlock over Cyprus is to have two states on the ethnically-split island.

Erdogan was speaking alongside Tufan Erhurman, the newly-elected Turkish Cypriot president who has pledged to explore a federal solution - long supported by the United Nations - to end the island's nearly 50-year-old division.

LONDON (Reuters) -British pro-Palestinian political commentator Sami Hamdi landed back in London on Thursday after being released from the United States, where he spent more than two weeks in immigration detention.

Hamdi was detained on October 26 at San Francisco International Airport after U.S. officials revoked his visa during a speaking tour in which he criticised Israel's actions in Gaza.

By Nafisa Eltahir

(Reuters) -The funding gap for aid agencies is accentuating Sudan's crisis, leaving them unable to help many of the tens of thousands of people fleeing from the Darfur city of al-Fashir and other areas, U.N. migration chief Amy Pope said.

The war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which began in April 2023, has created what the U.N. has called the world's largest humanitarian crisis at a time when global aid budgets are shrinking.