Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, state media reported, with China expressing readiness to help facilitate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Abbas will stay until Friday, Beijing has said, on his fifth official visit to the world's second-largest economy.

U.N. cultural and scientific agency UNESCO announced Monday that the United States plans to rejoin — and pay more than $600 million in back dues — after a decade-long dispute sparked by the organization's move to include Palestine as a member.

U.S. officials say the decision to return was motivated by concern that China is filling the gap left by the U.S. in UNESCO policymaking, notably in setting standards for artificial intelligence and technology education around the world.

Turkish shelling in northern Syria early Monday hit a vehicle killing one Russian soldier and injuring several others, Syrian Kurdish media and an opposition war monitor reported.

Monday's shelling came after a day of violence between U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters and Turkish troops in northern Syria left several dead on the Kurdish side.

Israel's opposition leader testified for the prosecution on Monday against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his corruption trial in Jerusalem.

Yair Lapid, a former prime minister himself and a major Netanyahu rival, is testifying in one of three cases against Netanyahu. The indictment claims Netanyahu used his position of power to further Hollywood mogul Arnon Milchan's interests in exhange for gifts, representing a conflict between the premier's public duties and personal friendship.

Iraq's parliament on Monday approved a budget that boosts public spending in the war-scarred nation and grants the federal government the upper hand over oil exports from the autonomous Kurdistan region.

The 198.9 trillion dinar ($153 billion) budget -- valid for three years though subject to future amendments -- also sets out record spending on public wages, investments and development projects.

The Kurdish-led authority in northeast Syria has announced that hundreds of fighters with the Islamic State group held in prisons around the region will be put on trial after their home countries refused to repatriate them.

The statement by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria said it still calls for the creation of an international tribunal to put those fighters on trial. It called on the United Nations, international rights groups and local organizations to help facilitate the trials.

One month into a much-touted program to heal the country's deep political rifts, Egyptian authorities have arrested dozens of dissidents, opposition supporters and football fans in a wave of repression.

Cairo inaugurated its long-delayed "national dialogue" on May 3, promising to give a platform to opposition voices that have been largely silenced since President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi took office in 2014.

Israeli forces on Friday killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry and the army said, with the latter adding that a soldier was lightly wounded.

Mehdi Bayadsa, 29, was killed by "bullets from the occupation (Israel) near the Rantis military checkpoint, west of Ramallah", the ministry said in a statement.

A little white pill has given Syrian President Bashar Assad powerful leverage with his Arab neighbors, who have been willing to bring him out of pariah status in hopes he will stop the flow of highly addictive Captagon amphetamines out of Syria.

Western governments have been frustrated by the red-carpet treatment Arab countries have given Assad, fearing that their reconciliation will undermine the push for an end to Syria's long-running civil war.

Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has said after meeting with the visiting U.S. secretary of state that while the kingdom would welcome U.S. aid in building its civilian nuclear program, "there are others that are bidding."

Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan was responding to a question about recent news reports that Saudi Arabia is asking for U.S. aid in building its own nuclear program in exchange for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.