Saudi Arabia is to host talks on Tuesday between the United States and Ukraine in a new diplomatic push after an argument erupted during President Volodymyr Zelensky's Feb. 28 visit to the White House.

The oil-rich kingdom may seem like an unusual venue for talks aimed at smoothing over relations after the blowup. But Saudi Arabia under its assertive Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been positioning itself as an ideal location for possible peace negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow — and even the first face-to-face talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Syria's top diplomat and his counterparts from neighboring countries have called for the lifting of Western-led sanctions on Syria and post-war reconciliation.

The foreign ministers of Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon made their remarks alongside Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani following a meeting in the Jordanian capital Amman.

Syria's Druze minority has a long history of cutting their own path to survive among the country's powerhouses. They are now trying again to navigate a new, uncertain Syria since the fall of longtime autocrat Bashar Assad.

Members of the small religious sect find themselves caught between two forces that many of them distrust: the new, Islamist-led government in Damascus and Syria's hostile neighbor, Israel, which has used the plight of the Druze as a pretext to intervene in the country.

The death toll from two days of clashes between Syrian security forces and loyalists of ousted President Bashar Assad and revenge killings that followed has risen to more than 1,000, a war monitoring group said Saturday, making it one of the deadliest acts of violence since Syria's conflict began 14 years ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in addition to 745 civilians killed, mostly in shootings from close distance, 125 government security force members and 148 militants with armed groups affiliated with Assad were killed. It added that electricity and drinking water were cut off in large areas around the city of Latakia.

U.S. President Donald Trump sent a letter to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, seeking a new deal with Tehran to restrain its rapidly advancing nuclear program and replace the agreement he withdrew America from in his first term in office.

Iranian state media immediately picked up on Trump's acknowledgment, given in portions of a Fox Business News interview aired on Friday, though there was no confirmation from Khamenei's office that any letter had been received. The interview is expected to air in full on Sunday.

Luis Suárez and Tadeo Allende scored second-half goals with a healthy Lionel Messi on the bench, and Inter Miami beat Jamaican club Cavalier FC 2-0 on Thursday night in the first leg of a CONCACAF Champions Cup group of 16 match.

Messi sat out his second straight game. He didn't travel with Miami to Houston for a Major League Soccer match against the Dynamo on Sunday night, which Miami won 4-1.

World shares were mostly lower on Friday, with Tokyo's benchmark closing down more than 2% after a sell-off on Wall Street.

A report was due later Friday from the U.S. Labor Department on how many workers U.S. employers hired last month. Economists are expecting to see an acceleration in hiring for February.

China's exports rose a less-than-expected 2.3% in January and February from a year earlier while imports fell more than 8% in a slow start to a year dogged by uncertainty over U.S. tariffs and other policies.

Economists had forecast that exports would rise 5% year-on-year and that imports would edge higher. China's overall trade surplus grew to $170.52 billion in the first two months of the year.

America's butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds.

The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday's journal Science.

Five cities in southern Brazil suspended classes Thursday due to a heat wave, authorities said, as temperatures in some places rose as high as 36 degrees Celsius (97 degrees Fahrenheit).

Rio Grande, one of the five cities — all of which are in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul — said its schools were not equipped to handle the extreme heat. Classes were expected to resume on Monday.