By Renju Jose

SYDNEY, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Australian leaders on Tuesday urged calm and called on protests to remain peaceful after clashes between police and demonstrators opposing Israeli President Isaac Herzog's visit to Australia erupted in Sydney.

Police said 27 people were arrested, including 10 for allegedly assaulting officers, after violence broke out on Monday evening when people failed to leave a planned protest site in central Sydney and police moved to clear access for pedestrians.

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A Palestinian woman, who lost dozens of family members in the Gaza war, has been hospitalized following a seizure in U.S. immigration detention, the Department of Homeland Security said on Monday.

On February 6, 2026, at about 8:45 p.m., "medical staff at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, notified ICE that detainee Leqaa Kordia was admitted to Texas Health Huguley Hospital in Burleson, Texas, for further evaluation following a seizure," a DHS spokesperson said.

Rubble is all that remains of the building once home to Adnan Mardash's grocery shop in north Lebanon's Tripoli after it collapsed, killing 14 people and shining a spotlight on the impoverished city's neglect.

Mardash, 54, said he shut the small ground-floor store where he worked for more than three decades and went to his nearby home shortly before the disaster on Sunday afternoon.

"Our neighbours and loved ones died... people lost their livelihoods," said the father of four, who has no other income.

International outrage was growing on Monday at Israeli plans to tighten the country's grip over the occupied West Bank, with the United Nations chief saying he was "gravely concerned".

Earlier, Saudi Arabia and seven other Muslim-majority countries condemned the new Israeli measures, which pave the way for more settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Feb 9 (Reuters) - The United States issued fresh guidance on Monday to commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane for Middle East oil supplies, as tensions simmered between Washington and Tehran over Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has in the past threatened to close down the Strait of Hormuz, a portion of which lies within its territorial waters, and has at times seized commercial ships and oil tankers moving through the area alleging smuggling.

By Terje Solsvik and Johan Ahlander

OSLO/STOCKHOLM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Norwegian police are investigating two high-profile diplomats in a corruption probe announced on Monday, part of a widening scandal in the Nordic country and across Europe over prominent figures' ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Mona Juul, who resigned from her post as ambassador to Jordan and Iraq on Sunday, is suspected of gross corruption while her husband, former government minister Terje Roed-Larsen, is suspected of complicity in gross corruption, police said.

Feb 9, (Reuters) - Israel has taken steps to help settlers acquire land in the occupied West Bank and widen its powers in parts of the territory where Palestinians have some self-rule - measures they said aimed to undermine the two-state solution.

It marks the latest blow to the idea of establishing a Palestinian state co-existing peacefully alongside Israel in territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Long backed by world powers, this vision formed the bedrock of the U.S.-backed peace process ushered in by the 1993 Oslo Accords.

By Ali Sawafta and Emily Rose

RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates led regional states on Monday in condemning Israel's move to ease settlement expansion and widen its powers in the West Bank, a step critics said went in the direction of annexing occupied land.

Sunday's decisions by Israel's security cabinet will make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land in the West Bank and give Israeli authorities more power to act in areas supposedly under full Palestinian control, two senior Israeli ministers said.

By Eltayeb Siddig

NEAR AL-OBEID, Sudan, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Gubara al-Basheer and his family used to traverse Sudan's desert with their camels and livestock, moving freely between markets, water sources, and green pastures.

But since war erupted in 2023, he and other Arab nomads have been stuck in the desert outside the central Sudanese city of al-Obeid, threatened by marauding bandits and ethnic tensions.

Israel's military said Monday it had killed four armed militants who emerged from a tunnel in southern Gaza and attacked its troops, accusing the suspects of a "blatant violation" of the ceasefire.

Despite a US-brokered truce that entered its second phase last month, violence has continued in the Palestinian territory, with Israel and Hamas trading accusations.

Gaza's health officials said that six people were killed on Monday by Israeli fire in several incidents separate to the one in Rafah, including four killed in an air strike on an apartment in Gaza City.