A Dutch salvage company has reached agreement with the United Nations to pump oil from a rusting tanker off the coast of war-ravaged Yemen in a move hailed as a "critical milestone" in moves to avert a possible environmental disaster, its parent company announced Thursday.

Boskalis said that its Smit Salvage subsidiary has reached agreement with the U.N. Development Program to transfer more than one million barrels of oil from the decaying tanker FSO Safer. A specialist support ship, the Ndeavor, is setting sail Friday to the east African nation of Djibouti to prepare for the mission, the company said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated a Cabinet minister known for inflammatory comments and for leading a grassroots campaign against African migrants to the post of consul general in New York, a high-profile job that deals with outreach to American Jews.

May Golan, currently a minister without portfolio in Netanyahu's government, built her political career on staunch opposition to African migrants in Israel. She calls them "infiltrators" and has portrayed the estimated 40,000 migrants, mostly concentrated in poor neighborhoods of the southern part of the city of Tel Aviv, as threats to security.

Egypt on Thursday repatriated dozens of its military personnel who had been held by Sudan's paramilitary force, which is locked in a deadly struggle with the Sudanese army to control the strategic African country.

The latest attempt at a cease-fire between the rival Sudanese forces faltered as gunfire rattled the capital of Khartoum. As global pressure to stop the violence failed, Japan and the Netherlands flew transport planes closer to the conflict-battered nation ahead of a possible evacuation of their citizens.

Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi has been remanded in custody following his arrest earlier this week, his Ennahdha party said Thursday, denouncing his "unjust imprisonment".

Ghannouchi, 81, a former speaker of parliament, was arrested on Monday after remarks warning that eradicating different viewpoints such as the left or political Islam, from which his party originated, might lead to a "civil war".

A crowd apparently panicked by gunfire and an electrical explosion stampeded at an event to distribute financial aid during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Yemen's capital late Wednesday, killing at least 78 people and injuring at least 73 others, according to witnesses and Houthi rebel officials.

The tragedy was Yemen's deadliest in years that was not related to the country's long-running war, and came ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan later this week.

Syria's semi-autonomous Kurdish administration said it was ready for talks with Damascus, as the government's ties with Arab states thaw more than a decade after the country's war broke out.

The government of President Bashar al-Assad rejects the Kurdish administration in north and northeast Syria and accuses it of "separatism".

The U.S. Navy sailed its first drone boat through the strategic Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, a crucial waterway for global energy supplies where American sailors often faces tense encounters with Iranian forces.

The trip by the L3 Harris Arabian Fox MAST-13, a 13-meter (41-foot) speedboat carrying sensors and cameras, drew the attention of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, but took place without incident, said Navy spokesman Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins. Two U.S. Coast Guard cutters, the USCGC Charles Moulthrope and USCGC John Scheuerman, accompanied the drone.

A former Iraqi religious official convicted of corruption has escaped police custody, prompting the arrest of more than two dozen officers suspected of helping him flee, the government said Wednesday.

Saad Qambash was once head of Iraq's Sunni Waqf, the state body overseeing religious and civilian properties for Sunni Muslims, and had been jailed for four years earlier this month for fraud.

Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank arrested a Palestinian teenager suspected of wounding two Israelis in a shooting in annexed east Jerusalem, the army said Wednesday.

Special military and police forces operating in Nablus overnight "apprehended within a few minutes the terrorist who carried out the shooting attack in Jerusalem yesterday", an army statement said.

Syria's chief diplomat is on a three-day official visit to Tunisia meant to restore diplomatic relations that have been cut off since 2012 during the civil war that followed President Bashar Assad's brutal crackdown on mass protests against his rule.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad had a meeting with Tunisian counterpart Nabil Ammar shortly after his arrival on Monday evening. No details were disclosed about the talks and Mikdad's schedule for Tuesday or Wednesday.