Gunmen shot dead a policeman on Wednesday in El-Arish, in Egypt's restive Sinai peninsula, medical sources said.

The militants opened fire on the police conscript who was standing outside a police station in north Sinai's main town, hitting him in the neck before fleeing in their vehicle.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Washington on Wednesday that EU moves to end dealings with Jewish settlements were harming its peace talks drive, an Israeli official said.

In a telephone call with Secretary of State John Kerry, who is in neighboring Jordan on his latest bid to revive direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Netanyahu warned that the EU was "damaging efforts to restart the talks."

A top Israeli law officer said on Wednesday that a culture of impunity reigns among Israeli bodies operating in the occupied territories, who fail to heed even their own rules.

The report was swiftly seized on by Israeli human rights groups and campaigners against expansion of the settlements as evidence of what they say is an "intolerable situation".

Kuwait's appeals court on Wednesday upheld a 20-month jail term against a female opposition activist for making remarks on social networkTwitter that were deemed insulting to the Gulf state's ruler.

On May 29 the lower court issued the jail term on Sara al-Darees for using her Twitter account to write the offensive remarks, but asked her to pay $700 as a bail to suspend carrying out the sentence.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Wednesday that she regretted not having been able to meet Egypt's ousted president Mohammed Morsi on a visit to Cairo.

She called for his immediate release from the custody he has been kept in since just hours after the military toppled him on July 3 following nationwide street protests against him.

President Barack Obama's nominee for U.N. envoy Wednesday slammed the global body's "unacceptable bias" against Israel, and pledged to lobby hard to get America's closest Mideast ally a seat on the Security Council.

Even as detractors criticize her past statements about Israel, genocide expert and human rights champion Samantha Power enjoys bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate, where broad cooperation this week on executive branch nominees was likely to ease her expected confirmation.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that it was too early to judge the future course of Egypt following the ouster of Mohammed Morsi.

"Very clearly order needs to be restored to the streets, stability needs to be restored, violence needs to be ended, rights need to be protected ... and the country needs to be able to return to normal business," Kerry told a press conference in Amman.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's return home after almost three months in hospital in Paris raises questions about his ability to complete the last nine months of his term, commentators say.

In a brief video broadcast on state television on Tuesday, Bouteflika appeared pale and tense as he was seen meeting his inner circle of officials.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that Israelis and Palestinians are getting closer to resuming peace talks.

"Through hard and deliberate work, we have been able to narrow those gaps very significantly," Kerry told a press conference.

Four Algerian soldiers were killed when two bombs struck their passing patrol in the region of Tipaza, west of the capital Algiers, media reports said Wednesday, adding the attack wounded another three troops.

The Tuesday attack appeared to have been pre-planned but coincided with the return home of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika from Paris after a stay of nearly three months in hospital.