Prominent Kurdish leader Massud Barzani met with Iraqi premier Adel Abdel Mahdi in Baghdad on Thursday during his first visit to the capital in over two years.

Barzani's visit is seen as another sign of an improvement in relations between Baghdad and Iraqi Kurdistan that deteriorated sharply after the autonomous region held an independence referendum last year.

Denmark on Thursday suspended arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the second country to do so after Germany.

US President Donald Trump has doubled down on his partnership with Saudi Arabia, calling it an indispensable ally after a journalist's grisly murder, but critics say his position ignores Washington's enormous leverage over Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has warned criticism of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a "red line", after Donald Trump heaped praise on the kingdom in defiance of warnings he was giving Riyadh a pass on a journalist's grisly murder.

Dozens of migrants have been forced off a cargo vessel by Libyan authorities after refusing to disembark over fears of abuses, in a move decried Wednesday by human rights groups. 

Amnesty International said Wednesday it is enlisting the help of thousands of online activists to speed up its investigation into the U.S.-led campaign that drove Islamic State militants from their self-styled capital of Raqqa but left the Syrian city in ruins.

The London-based rights group said the new phase of its investigation enables thousands of online activists, using satellite imagery of the city, to map out the destruction over the four-month campaign, which ended in October 2017.

A United Arab Emirates court sentenced British student Matthew Hedges to life in jail on Wednesday after convicting him of spying, a family spokesperson said. 

Skin and bones, 10-year-old Ghazi Saleh lies on a hospital bed in Yemen's government-held third city Taez barely breathing. He weighs just eight kilogrammes (less than 18 pounds).

The UN Yemen envoy faced his "sternest test" on Wednesday as he flew into the rebel-held capital Sanaa for talks on averting all-out fighting for the lifeline port of Hodeida and widespread famine.

A suicide attack that claimed the lives of at least 55 people at a religious event marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday in Kabul on Tuesday is among the deadliest in the country since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.