A French court will rule on September 25 in the trial of former president Nicolas Sarkozy on charges he accepted illegal campaign financing from late Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi, a judge said Tuesday.

Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, has denied the charges.

He is already serving a one-year sentence with an electronic bracelet in a separate influence-peddling case.

Prosecutors argue that the former conservative leader and his aides devised a pact with Kadhafi in 2005 to illegally fund his victorious presidential election bid two years later.

A Lebanese judge on Tuesday referred former central bank governor Riad Salameh to court for trial over the alleged embezzlement of $44 million of the bank's funds, a judicial official said.

The move came seven months after Salameh was arrested in Lebanon over the case.

Salameh, who headed the central bank for three decades, faces numerous accusations including embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion in separate probes in crisis-hit Lebanon and abroad.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Tuesday that Gaza had become "a killing field" because Israel has continued to block aid, an accusation an Israeli official quickly denied, saying there was "no shortage" of aid.

"More than an entire month has passed without a drop of aid into Gaza. No food. No fuel. No medicine. No commercial supplies. As aid has dried up, the floodgates of horror have re-opened," Guterres said in remarks to journalists.

Pro-Turkey Syrian groups have scaled down their military presence in a historically Kurdish-majority area of the country's north which they have controlled since 2018, a Syrian defence ministry official said on Tuesday.

The move follows an agreement signed last month between Syria's new authorities and Kurdish officials that provides for the return of displaced Kurds, including tens of thousands who fled the Afrin region in 2018.

US President Donald Trump appeared to catch Tehran off guard on Monday when he announced "direct talks" between the arch-foes over Iran's nuclear programme, having previously threatened to bomb the Islamic republic.

Despite previously having expressed major reservations over the talks, Tehran has agreed to participate but through an intermediary.

- What does Iran want? -

The priority for the Islamic republic is the lifting of biting sanctions that have placed a stranglehold on the energy-rich country's economy for decades.

The Taliban government accused Pakistan on Tuesday of violently expelling Afghans after Islamabad cancelled hundreds of thousands of residence permits, pressuring families across the border.

Islamabad announced at the start of March that 800,000 Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC) would be cancelled -- the second phase of a deportation programme which has already expelled around 800,000 undocumented Afghans.

A rare blue diamond valued at $20 million went on pre-auction display on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, capital of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.

The 10-carat Mediterranean Blue, which will go on sale in Geneva next month, is the showpiece of a collection estimated at $100 million, organisers said.

"Included in the group are the largest flawless diamond in the world... the second largest red diamond known to exist and several diamonds over 100 carats," Sotheby's auction house said in a statement.

Iran said Tuesday a new nuclear deal could be agreed with the United States provided Tehran's longtime adversary shows sufficient goodwill in upcoming talks, as Israel warned of military action if talks drag on.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran's principal aim remained the lifting of sweeping US sanctions. Their reimposition by President Donald Trump in 2018 has dealt a heavy blow to the Iranian economy.

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, Europe's climate monitor said on Tuesday, prolonging an unprecedented heat streak that has pushed the bounds of scientific explanation.

In Europe, it was the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service, driving rainfall extremes across a continent warming faster than any other.

The world meanwhile saw the second-hottest March in the Copernicus dataset, sustaining a near-unbroken spell of record or near-record-breaking temperatures that has persisted since July 2023.

Israel's supreme court on Tuesday gave the cabinet and attorney general's office a deadline to find a solution to the government's hotly-contested decision to sack domestic security chief Ronen Bar.

Following an hours-long hearing which was briefly interrupted with protests from government supporters and critics, Supreme Court President Yitzhak Amit told the two sides to find a compromise.