The United Arab Emirates has announced a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags to take effect next year, the latest initiative aimed at reducing pollution in the oil-rich nation.

The law would prohibit the import, production and circulation of such bags from Jan. 1, 2024, according to an announcement carried by the state-run WAM news agency.

Weapons supplied by the United Kingdom and the United States and used by a Saudi-led coalition fighting in war-torn Yemen killed at least 87 civilians and wounded 136 others in just over a year, a new report said Wednesday.

The report by the Oxfam charity found that the Saudi-led coalition used weapons supplied solely by the U.K. and the U.S. in hundreds of attacks on civilians in Yemen between January 2021 to the end of February 2022. Britain is the second-biggest supplier of weapons to Saudi Arabia, after the U.S.

Iran has protested to Iraq over the use of the name "Arabian Gulf" for a regional football competition held in the neighboring country, state media reported Wednesday.

The Islamic republic insists the body of water should be called the "Persian Gulf" and has repeatedly raised the issue with countries and organisations that refer to it otherwise.

The U.S. Navy seized over 2,100 assault rifles from a ship in the Gulf of Oman it believes came from Iran and were bound for Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a Navy spokesman said Tuesday. It was the latest capture of weapons allegedly heading to the Arab world's poorest country.

The seizure last Friday happened after a team from the USS Chinook, a Cyclone-class coastal patrol boat, boarded a traditional wooden sailing vessel known as a dhow. They discovered the Kalashnikov-style rifles individually wrapped in green tarps aboard the ship, said Cmdr. Timothy Hawkins, a spokesman for the Navy's Mideast-based 5th Fleet.

Israel's parliament started voting overnight on reviving a law which gives settlers in the occupied West Bank access to civilian law, while their Palestinian neighbours face military courts.

The U.N. Security Council has voted unanimously to keep a key border crossing from Turkey to Syria's rebel-held northwest open for critical aid deliveries for another six months. Syria's ally Russia — in a surprise move — supported the resolution.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said after the vote that cross-border aid remains "an indispensable lifeline for 4.1 million people in northwest Syria."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government has wasted no time implementing its ultra-nationalist agenda, including adopting a seemingly petty ban on displaying the Palestinian flag and shaking the foundations of Israel's democracy with a proposed legal assault on the Supreme Court.

After barely two weeks in power, the most hard-line and religious government in Israel's history already is fomenting divisions at home and barreling toward conflict with the Palestinians and Israel's allies abroad.

The United Arab Emirates will begin teaching about the Holocaust in history classes in primary and secondary schools across the country, the country's embassy in the U.S. says.

The embassy provided no details on the curriculum and education authorities in the Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, did not immediately acknowledge the announcement on Monday.

The Palestinian prime minister accused Israel's new ultra-nationalist government of blocking "even the most non-violent ways of fighting the occupation," according to an interview published Monday, after Israel retaliated for the Palestinians' successful effort to enlist U.N. help.

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh's comments to Haaretz came amid a flurry of punitive steps by Israel since taking office late last month, most recently banning the Palestinian flag from public spaces. Israel has stripped Palestinian officials of VIP privileges and broken up a meeting of Palestinian parents discussing their children's education.

Israel has revoked the Palestinian foreign minister's VIP travel permit, part of a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians that Israel's new hard-line government announced days ago.

Riad Malki said in a statement that he was returning from the Brazilian president's inauguration when he was informed that Israel rescinded his VIP travel permit, which allows top Palestinian officials to travel more easily in and out of the occupied West Bank than ordinary Palestinians. It was not clear whether the permits of other officials had been revoked as well.