Belgium and Iran conducted a prisoner exchange Friday in Oman, with officials saying Tehran released a Belgian aid worker in exchange for an Iranian diplomat convicted of attempting to bomb a meeting of exiles in France.

One cold winter night, Syrian Ibrahim Othman went out to pray and came home cradling a baby girl, abandoned at the doorstep of the village mosque just hours after she was born.

Algerian opposition figure Karim Tabbou has been taken into custody for unknown reasons, reports said Wednesday, with his brother saying plainclothes police officers had detained him at his home.

Oil-rich but war-scarred Libya has for years been ruled by two rival governments, but now some analysts see faint signs of progress toward reconciliation between them.

The families of Tunisian opposition figures detained in a government crackdown filed a case with Africa's human rights court on Wednesday seeking the immediate release of their loved ones.

Iran has named an ambassador to Saudi Arabia, state media reported Wednesday, sealing a thaw in relations more than seven years after the regional rivals severed ties.

Israeli lawmakers passed an annual budget Wednesday with controversial allocations for ultra-Orthodox Jews, in a concession to a religious party in the governing coalition that drew protests from the opposition.

Thousands of Israelis marched through Jerusalem on Tuesday to protest the government's plans to hand more cash to the ultra-Orthodox minority, accusing the coalition of "looting" state funds.

The Israeli army said on Tuesday it demolished the home of a Palestinian involved in an attack in Tel Aviv that killed one and wounded two others in March.

Video footage of the attack shows a man the army says was Moataz Khawaja, 23, shooting three men from behind, including one in the head — in one of Tel Aviv's busiest streets — before being shot and killed by Israeli police. Hamas claimed him as a member of its armed wing.

Israel's defense minister has said that Israel's new government has greatly increased the number of strikes on Iranian targets since taking office late last year.

Yoav Gallant did not provide an exact number of airstrikes. But the address, delivered at a security conference, marked rare public comments on Israeli military activity in Syria.

A top Russian official who faces sanctions in the West over Moscow's war on Ukraine visited Saudi Arabia and held talks with his counterpart in the kingdom early on Tuesday, state media reported.

Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev's visit to Riyadh came just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed an Arab League summit held in Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port city of Jeddah on Friday. The visits underline how the kingdom and Gulf Arab states, traditionally the security clients of the United States, have been maintaining their relations with Moscow amid the Ukraine war.