By Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he secretly switched planes in Turkey last month at the direction of the U.S. Secret Service, but that the plane he ultimately flew on was still more vulnerable than Air Force One.

Following a NATO summit in Ankara, Trump was transferred from Air Force One to a military plane via a catering truck in an extraordinary deception prompted by an Iranian assassination threat, U.S. media reported.

QUSRA, West Bank, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Israeli troops clashed with Jewish settlers on Wednesday while trying to disperse them from a West Bank outpost they set up directly in front of Palestinian homes, and later withdrew from the area after failing to clear the settlers, witnesses said.

The incident on the outskirts of the Palestinian village of Qusra in the occupied West Bank marked a rare confrontation between settlers and the military and comes amid a sharp increase in settler land seizures and attacks on Palestinians.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he hoped more countries would join a defence agreement signed last week between Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan aimed at stabilising a region wracked by conflict.

The so-called Mecca Joint Defence Agreement was signed on Friday as the Middle East grapples with fallout from the US-Iran war which has dragged in regional players and disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. 

By Mubasher Bukhari

LAHORE, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Pakistan's ruling party appeared poised to win a majority in Pakistan-administered Kashmir's local assembly, even as some of the most closely watched constituencies had yet to vote amid deadly unrest.

The Pakistan Muslim League (N) had secured 25 seats in the 53-seat assembly as of Wednesday, but was widely expected by analysts to win more constituencies in at least two further rounds of voting, and be granted additional reserved seats.

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A group of current and former Palestinian students and staff have sued Columbia University, alleging discriminatory treatment by the school against its Palestinian community since late 2023, according to a court filing in New York.

• The lawsuit said the university failed to protect its Palestinian members from harassment and targeted them through what it cast as "unfair and biased disciplinary hearings."

DAMASCUS, Aug 11 (Reuters) - A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death on Tuesday after a trial in absentia, convicting him of crimes including killings, torture, and arbitrary arrest during the country's nearly 14-year war.

It was the first Syrian conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel offensive in December 2024 that ended decades of his family's iron-fisted rule over Syria, and the brutal war that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

German travel giant TUI said Wednesday that bookings were returning to normal levels despite the ongoing Mideast war, as it presented its latest financial results.

Tourism in Europe is experiencing a turbulent summer marked by soaring jet fuel prices because of the US and Israeli war against Iran, as well as heatwaves and wildfires in Spain, France, Portugal and Greece.

By Mohammed Ghobari, Jonathan Saul, Nayera Abdallah and Yasmine Ghania

Aug 12 (Reuters) - Four crew members were killed in an attack by Iran-backed Houthis on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Tuesday, Yemen's transport ministry said, while the U.S. military said it struck a container ship attempting to sail toward an Iranian port.

Two Yemeni rescuers from an anti-Houthi military group were also killed in the Bab el-Mandeb attack, Yemen's Coast Guard said.

SINGAPORE, Aug 12 (Reuters) - The tally of vessels tracked in the Strait of Hormuz fell to a one-week low of eight on Tuesday, shipping data showed, as owners avoided the key waterway amid continued hostilities in the Middle East.

The United States and Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis reported separate attacks as prospects appeared to dim for an end to the Iran war, with Tehran saying the strait would stay closed unless Washington accepted its conditions.

Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump accused Iran of being "devious negotiators" in an interview released late on Monday and described some of his current options in the war — "just bop along" and let Tehran fail economically or hit them "really, really hard."

"I'm sort of negotiating," Trump told Real America's Voice in a phone interview. "They're very devious negotiators."