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.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to undermine prospects for a Palestinian state, after talks in Saudi Arabia which linked normalization to peace efforts.

Blinken, after wrapping up a visit to the Gulf Arab monarchy criticized by rights groups, spoke by telephone with Netanyahu to discuss "deepening Israel's integration into the Middle East through normalization with countries in the region," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

U.N. investigators are compiling evidence on the development and use of chemical weapons by Islamic State extremists in Iraq after they seized about a third of the country in 2014, and are advancing work on the militant group's gender-based violence and crimes against children, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Christians and Yazidis, the head of the investigative team said Wednesday.

Christian Ritscher told the U.N. Security Council that survivors of a March 2016 chemical attack against Taza Khurmatu, a mainly Shia Turkmen town south of Kirkuk in northeast Iraq, were still deeply impacted when he visited earlier this year.

The sound of children and music echoed down a narrow basement hallway in Israel as they scrambled in a pool of balls, climbed on a jungle gym, munched popcorn and laughed.

The atmosphere changed suddenly on that Saturday last month, as at least a dozen religious men appeared and blocked the entrance, accusing the indoor playground of desecrating the Jewish sabbath by opening for business. Angry parents confronted them, scuffles broke out and in an instant, the center in this mixed city had become a flashpoint symbol of a larger battle between secular and religious Jews in Israel.

The Israeli army said on Thursday that it demolished the West Bank home of a Palestinian involved in twin bombings in Jerusalem that killed two and wounded at least 18 others in November.

Israeli authorities arrested Islam Faroukh in December on suspicion of carrying out the bombings, part of a more than year-long surge in violence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Riyadh and Washington urged Western governments Thursday to repatriate citizens who joined the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, where thousands still languish in prisons or camps.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to meet Gulf Arab officials in Saudi Arabia Wednesday at a time of rapidly shifting alliances following the oil-rich kingdom's rapprochement with Iran.

Blinken will attend a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) ministerial meeting in the capital Riyadh, a day after he flew into Jeddah and held talks with Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, in which he raised human rights issues.

Israel's foreign minister chided U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday for speaking out against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's planned overhaul of the country's judiciary.

The exchange underscored tensions between the Biden administration and Netanyahu's new government — the most right-wing and religious in Israel's history — over the planned judicial overhaul.

Opposition lawmakers won a majority in Kuwait's parliament in the Gulf state's seventh general election in just over a decade, with only one woman voted into office, according to results announced on Wednesday.

A real estate deal in Jerusalem's Old City, at the epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has sent the historic Armenian community there into a panic as residents search for answers about the feared loss of their homes to a mysterious investor.

The 99-year lease of some 25% of the Old City's Armenian Quarter has touched sensitive nerves in the Holy Land and sparked a controversy extending far beyond the Old City walls. The fallout has forced the highest authority of the Armenian Orthodox Church to cloister himself in a convent and prompted a disgraced priest who is allegedly behind the deal to flee to a Los Angeles suburb.