The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said Tuesday its inspectors had found several tons of nuclear material in Syria, at a site Damascus reported to the agency last month.

The inspectors visited two sites, one in Deir Ezzor and "a second location related to the nuclear material identified by Syria recently", according to a joint statement.

By Emma Farge

GENEVA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The portion of women in Afghanistan's workforce has fallen to just 5% since the Taliban takeover five years ago, according to the International Labour Organization, which called for measures to address their "severe exclusion".

• Female labour force participation fell to less than a third of its previous level, to 5.1% in 2026 from 16.5% in 2020.

• In contrast, male employment has expanded rapidly, the ILO said.

The Israeli military is touted as the most powerful in the Middle East, striking targets deep into enemy territory. But for more than a week, Israeli troops have somehow failed to evict a small group of settlers sitting on rocks in the occupied West Bank.

Experts says the military has long shown inertia when its task is stopping surging violence against Palestinians, due to government backing for the settlement movement and the increasing influence of settler ideology within the army's ranks.

(Corrects location of meeting to Egypt, not Cairo, in paragraphs 1 and 3)

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Tom Perry

Aug 17 (Reuters) - Khalil Al-Hayya, the Hamas chief who met U.S. envoy Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, in Egypt on Sunday, emerged as a pivotal figure in the Palestinian militant group during the Gaza war as Israel killed its other leaders.

Named Hamas' overall leader in July, Hayya narrowly escaped assassination himself in a 2025 Israeli airstrike in Qatar that killed his son and aides.

(Corrects paragraph two to show that the siege has been ongoing for over a week, not nearly a week)

By Pesha Magid

QUSRA, West Bank, Aug 17 (Reuters) - He watched from thousands of miles away on a security camera feed as militant Israeli settlers encircled his West Bank house, fearing he could lose his home forever amid increasing Israeli seizures of Palestinian property in the occupied territory.

By Timour Azhari

RIYADH, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has placed financial transfers to the United Arab Emirates under extra layers of regulatory oversight reserved for countries considered high-risk for illicit money flows, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter, the latest sign of a widening rift between the wealthy Gulf monarchies.

Turkey rejected on Wednesday Israeli allegations that it posed a threat by preparing to send troops to a base in Syria, which was hit in a strike that the United States blamed on Israel.

The strike marked extraordinary defiance by Israel of the United States, which has sought to support Syria's new government led by a former jihadist allied with Turkey.

MANILA, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The Philippines does not expect a reduction in military activities with its treaty ally the United States amid redeployment of some U.S. defence assets to the Middle East, an official said on Monday.

The movement of assets including the USS George Washington aircraft carrier from the Pacific to the Middle East had raised some questions about U.S. defence arrangements in the Indo-Pacific, but no doubts about its commitment, said Roy Vincent Trinidad, a military spokesperson.

By Parisa Hafezi

DUBAI, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Even as Iran projects resilience in the war with the United States, its leaders are worried that a threat of more economic punishment by Donald Trump could increase hardships, reignite unrest and further erode the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy.

The U.S. president vowed on Friday to hit Iran hard economically, a day after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Washington would impose measures on Tehran that have "never been seen" as early as next week. Washington has not said what those measures will entail.

SINGAPORE, Aug 18 (Reuters) - Ship crossings via the Strait of Hormuz were still in single digits on Monday, despite rising slightly from the weekend, according to preliminary shipping data on Tuesday, amid a stalemate in U.S. and Iranian peace talks.

Six commodity ships transited the strait on Monday, of which three were exiting the Gulf and three were entering, Kpler shiptracking data showed, compared with the 10-day average of 11 ships. Three ships transited on Saturday while two moved through the waterway on Sunday.