The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has pointed to possible policy shifts affecting Egypt, Turkey, the war in Ukraine and other issues around the globe as he took over the powerful leadership of the panel, replacing indicted Sen. Bob Menendez.

Sen. Ben Cardin, a veteran Maryland Democrat, will have an abbreviated term leading the committee because his term expires in January 2025 and he is not seeking reelection. He described him unexpectedly inheriting the chairmanship, with its power to help shape how the United States approaches the rest of the world, as a "pinch yourself" moment.

More than a year after Algeria launched a pilot program to teach English in elementary schools, the country is hailing it as a success and expanding it in a move that reflects a widening linguistic shift underway in former French colonies throughout Africa.

Students returning to third and fourth grade classrooms this fall will participate in two 45-minute English classes each week as the country creates new teacher training programs at universities and eyes more transformational changes in the years ahead. Additionally, the country is strengthening enforcement of a preexisting law against private schools who operate primarily in French.

Israel reopened a main crossing with the Gaza Strip on Thursday, allowing thousands of Palestinian laborers to enter the country for the first time since it was sealed last week.

The crossing reopens after weeks of violent protests along Gaza's frontier with Israel, where demonstrators have thrown explosives and rocks and launched incendiary balloons that sparked fires. The protests have driven up tensions, prompting Israel to launch airstrikes targeting military posts belonging to the militant group Hamas that rules Gaza.

Iraq's prime minister on Thursday visited injured patients and the families of victims in northern Iraq days after a deadly wedding fire killed around 100 people, as two more people died from their injuries.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani arrived in Nineveh province early Thursday with a delegation of ministers and security officials, state television reported. He met with the wounded and family members of victims at Hamdaniyah Hospital and Al-Jumhoori Hospital.

Five family members were killed in a mass shooting Wednesday in an Arab town in northern Israel, police and advocates said, the latest victims of a recent surge of gun violence within the country's Arab communities. Another Arab citizen of Israel was killed in a separate shooting earlier Wednesday.

Israeli police said that three men and two women were shot and killed at a house in the northern Bedouin town of Basmat Tab'un. They said they were treating the incident as criminal and hunting down suspected assailants. Israeli medics said that a sixth man was shot and wounded in the rampage.

Russia accused the United States on Wednesday of promoting Israel's normalization of relations with Arab nations and circumventing the Arab Peace Initiative launched by Saudi Arabia in 2002, which calls for a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before any diplomatic recognition of Israel.

The statement by Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia at the U.N. Security Council's monthly meeting on the Mideast also implicitly criticized Saudi Arabia — without naming it — for moving toward establishing diplomatic relations with Israel while taking "aggressive illegal actions" including an "unprecedented" expansion of settlements on territory that is supposed to be part of an independent Palestinian state.

Israel's Supreme Court on Thursday was hearing a challenge to a law that makes it harder to remove a sitting prime minister, which critics say is designed to protect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has been working to reshape the justice system while he is on trial for alleged corruption.

The hearing is part of several pivotal court challenges against a proposed package of legislation and government steps meant to alter the country's justice system. It comes as Israel has been plunged into months of turmoil over the plan and deepens a rift between Netanyahu's government and the judiciary, which it wants to weaken despite unprecedented opposition.

Israel has arrested five Palestinians in a plot allegedly hatched in Iran to target and spy on senior Israeli politicians, including Israel's far-right national security minister, the country's internal security agency said.

The Shin Bet security service alleged that an Iranian security official living in neighboring Jordan had recruited three Palestinian men in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and another two Palestinian citizens of Israel to gather intelligence about several high-profile Israeli politicians.

At least 100 people were killed and more than 150 injured when a fire broke out during a wedding at an event hall in the northern Iraqi town of Qaraqosh, officials said early Wednesday.

Fighters loyal to the Syrian government have clashed with Kurdish-led forces in a mainly Arab district of eastern Syria, leaving 25 people dead in two days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed by Washington, said Tuesday they had "driven out the regime gunmen who had infiltrated the Dheiban area" of Deir Ezzor province in the clashes which erupted on Monday.