The sister of a Jewish woman murdered in Paris in 2017 will seek a trial in Israel after the killer avoided being tried in France on the grounds he acted in delirium due to drug-taking, lawyers said. 

Jordan's prosecutor released on Thursday 16 people accused of taking part in an alleged plot to destabilize the kingdom but kept in detention two key suspects, state media said.

The head of the global chemical weapons watchdog defended Thursday the removal of Syria's voting rights, saying it showed the body's "ethical commitment" to eliminate toxic armaments.

A renowned Algerian scholar on Islam, Said Djabelkhir, was handed a three year prison sentence Thursday for "offending the precepts of Islam", his lawyer told AFP.

"He has been sentenced to three years in prison," lawyer Moumen Chadi said, adding he was "shocked" by the severity of the sentence. Djabelkhir, 53, was put on trial after seven lawyers and a fellow academic made complaints against him.

The Israeli military said Thursday that a Syrian missile that reached deep into Israeli territory and set off air raid sirens near the country's top-secret nuclear reactor was the result of a misfire and not a deliberate attack.

The missile landed in southern Israel early Thursday, prompting Israel to respond with airstrikes on the missile launcher and other targets in Syria.

A powerful explosion has taken place at a sensitive defense factory during a test in central Israel, causing no casualties, Israeli media reports said.

The explosion occurred during a “routine test” by the Tomer factory for advanced weapons, which develops rocket engines, the Ofek satellite launchers and houses various types of missiles, the website of Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

Member states of the global chemical weapons watchdog voted Wednesday to strip Syria of its rights at the organisation in an unprecedented step after a probe blamed Damascus for poison gas attacks.

A first batch of Covid-19 vaccine doses was expected to arrive Wednesday in war-torn northwestern Syria, where millions of people live in dire humanitarian conditions, a UN official said.

A first round of direct talks between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran signaled a possible de-escalation following years of animosity that often spilled into neighboring countries and at least one still-raging war. But few expect quick results.

The talks, hosted by Iraq earlier this month, were confirmed Tuesday to The Associated Press by an Iraqi and a Western official in Baghdad.

Greece will lend a Patriot missile battery to Saudi Arabia to protect its critical energy infrastructure, Greek officials said Tuesday, as the Gulf kingdom grapples with growing attacks by Yemen's Huthi rebels.