France Tuesday repatriated 15 women and 32 children held in a prison camp for suspected jihadists in Syria, the foreign ministry said, in the third major return of French citizens from the country.

Rights groups have been pressing for years for France to take back the wives and children of alleged Islamic State group fighters held in the camps, since the jihadist movement was ousted from its self-declared "caliphate" in 2019.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, appealed Tuesday for $1.6 billion for its work in 2023, as it struggles to overcome chronic budget shortfalls.

UNRWA -- which provides services to nearly six million Palestinians registered in the Palestinian territories, including Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, as well as in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria -- warned that "compounding challenges" had placed it under "immense strain".

Hundreds of Israeli high-tech workers protested against the government's judicial reform plan Tuesday, claiming the controversial measures will hurt the flourishing sector by undermining the rule of law. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government insists the reforms are essential to correct an imbalance that has given judges too much power over elected officials. 

An Israeli group raising funds for Jewish extremists convicted in some of the country's most notorious hate crimes is collecting tax-exempt donations from Americans, according to findings by The Associated Press and the Israeli investigative platform Shomrim.

The records in the case suggest that Israel's far right is gaining a new foothold in the United States.

Kuwait's government has resigned amid a power struggle with the Arab Gulf country's assembly less than four months after parliamentary elections delivered a mandate for change.

The state-run KUNA news agency confirmed the resignation, which had earlier been reported by local media, without providing further details. It's the fifth time a Kuwaiti government has resigned in just over two years.

Human Rights Watch charged Monday that new Israeli rules for foreigners entering the West Bank risked turning the occupied territory into "another Gaza," cutting residents off from the outside world.

The regulations, which have faced waves of condemnation from the European Union and United States, have also been clouded by uncertainty.

Members of the Egyptian Bar Association have called off a days-long strike held in protest against the jailing of six colleagues, a statement said.

The association had announced Thursday an open-ended strike to condemn their colleagues' sentencing to two years in jail over a court brawl earlier this month.

A building collapsed Sunday in Syria's war-damaged second city of Aleppo, killing 16 people including children, with the search for survivors extending into the night.

Much of Aleppo was destroyed during Syria's conflict that began nearly 12 years ago and left many of the remaining structures in a decrepit state.

Italy's chief diplomat has held talks with Egyptian and Arab League officials in Cairo that focused on regional security and the conflict in neighboring Libya, as well as sensitive bilateral issues.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he raised with Egypt's president the case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian graduate student who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed in Cairo in 2016, and that of Patrick George Zaki, an Egyptian activist studying in Bologna who had been detained for nearly two years.

Iraq's prime minister on Monday replaced the governor of the country's Central Bank following a weekslong plunge of the Iraqi dinar, the state news agency reported.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani made the move after the governor, Mustafa Ghaleb Mukheef, told him he no longer wishes to stay in the job, the Iraqi News Agency said. Mukheef, who was in the post since 2020, was replaced by Muhsen al-Allaq, a former central bank governor, the agency added.