Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof's "The Seed of the Sacred Fig" won a special prize at the Cannes film festival last year and is hoping to go one better at the Oscars on Sunday.

But the powerful drama, set during the "Woman, Life, Freedom" wave of protests and nominated for best international film in the 97th Academy Awards, will not be presented as an Iranian film.

In Kibbutz Nirim, hard by the Gaza border, the sound of hammers cuts through the silence that has settled on this small Israeli farming community since a ceasefire took effect on January 19.

Hamas's 2023 attack tore through the community of around 400 people, just two kilometres (little more than a mile) from the border but, 16 months later, Nirim is rebuilding now that the bombs have subsided.

"It's so important that we make it beautiful again," said Adele Raemer, an Israeli-American who has lived in the kibbutz for 49 years.

Relations between France and Algeria have hit a new low with Algiers blaming the rise of the French far right for a more combative approach from Paris towards its former colony.

Algeria has "clearly become the battleground for internal French political disputes, where no blow is too low," the foreign ministry said in a sharply worded statement.

It pointed to the French far right as the "instigator" of the deepening rift and accused it of "taking French-Algerian relations hostage".

An internal Israeli army investigation into Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack released on Thursday acknowledged the military's "complete failure" to prevent the deadly assault, saying that for years it had underestimated the group's capabilities.

The attack, which left hundreds of Israelis dead, sparked a devastating war in Gaza, which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

The longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails, Nael Barghouti who spent more than four decades behind bars, walked free on Thursday under the latest hostage-prisoner swap of a fragile Gaza truce.

Barghouti spent 45 years behind bars, including 34 of them consecutively, according to the Palestinian Prisoners Club advocacy group.

He arrived in Egypt on Thursday, after being expelled from the Palestinian territories upon his release.

On a patch of city land beside the sea, urban Emiratis sit beneath the shimmering skyscrapers of wealthy Dubai, revamping a camping tradition rooted in the desert.

Dozens of camper trailers are lined up, with simple facilities set up in the open air against a backdrop featuring the world's tallest building, the needle-like Burj Khalifa -- a symbol of the ostentatious lifestyles and consumerism associated with the city.

Khaled al-Kaissi, 38, is among the minority of the population -- around 10 percent -- who are native Emiratis.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday that the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal "must hold", with just hours to go before an initial phase expires.

His comments came after Palestinian militant group Hamas called for international pressure on Israel to enter the next phase of the ceasefire, as Egypt said negotiations had resumed in Cairo.

The truce's first phase is due to expire on Saturday morning, after largely halting more than 15 months of bombardment and fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday accused North Korea of being behind the theft of $1.5 billion worth of digital assets last week, the largest crypto heist in history.

Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit reported last week that it had been robbed of 400,000 in cryptocurrency Ethereum.

According to the company, attackers exploited security protocols during a transaction, enabling them to transfer the assets to an unidentified address.

On Wednesday, the US government pointed the finger at Pyongyang.

The king of Morocco has called on people to refrain from sacrificing sheep during a religious festival later this year because of a drought that has decimated livestock populations and driven up the price of meat.

Millions of sheep, goats and other livestock are sacrificed across the Muslim world every year during Eid al-Adha, one of two key Islamic holidays and due this year in June.

But Morocco is enduring a seventh consecutive year of drought, which has led to a 38 percent fall in livestock numbers in 12 months.

The UN rights chief on Wednesday rejected as "unlawful" proposals for the annexation of or forced transfer from Palestinian territories, warning they posed a threat to the entire region.

"We must resist any normalisation of unlawful conduct, including proposals for annexation or forced transfer," Volker Turk told the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Such proposals "could threaten the peace and security of Palestinians and Israelis, and of the wider region", he warned, insisting that "this is the moment for voices of reason to prevail".