Sudan filed a case at the top United Nations court accusing the United Arab Emirates of breaching the genocide convention by arming and funding the rebel paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces in Sudan's deadly war, the court announced Thursday. The UAE called the filing a publicity stunt and said it would seek to have the case dismissed.

The International Court of Justice said Sudan's case, filed Wednesday, concerns acts allegedly perpetrated by the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias including "genocide, murder, theft of property, rape, forcible displacement, trespassing, vandalism of public properties, and violation of human rights" targeting the Masalit people.

The Muslim world will be asked to throw its weight behind an Arab counter-plan to U.S. President Donald Trump's widely condemned proposal to take over war-torn Gaza at an emergency meeting on Friday.

Foreign ministers from the 57-member Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will meet at its headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, three days after the Arab League endorsed Egypt's alternative plan for Gaza.

Jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah began a hunger strike at the start of the month after his mother was hospitalized more than 150 days into her own hunger strike, his family said on Friday.

He began refusing food at the Wadi al-Natroun prison "on Saturday March 1 after hearing news that his mother had been hospitalized" in London, where she has been on hunger strike to put pressure on the British government to secure his release.

Columbia University senior Maryam Alwan was visiting family in Jordan over winter break when she received an email from the school accusing her of discriminatory harassment. Her supposed top offense: writing an op-ed in the student newspaper calling for divestment from Israel.

The probe is part of a flurry of recent cases brought by a new university disciplinary committee — the Office of Institutional Equity — against Columbia students who have expressed criticism of Israel, according to records shared with The Associated Press.

Turkish security forces have killed 26 Kurdish militants in the past week, the Turkish defense ministry said Thursday, even as the militants' imprisoned leader called on his group to disband and his fighters declared a ceasefire.

A defense ministry statement said the militants were killed in military operations in areas including the north of Iraq and Syria. It did not provide details on the circumstances of the clashes.

The Trump administration's cuts to USAID have frozen hundreds of millions of dollars in contractual payments to aid groups, leaving them paying out of pocket to preserve a fragile ceasefire, according to officials from the U.S. humanitarian agency.

The cutbacks threaten to halt the small gains aid workers have made combatting Gaza's humanitarian crisis during the Israel-Hamas ceasefire. They also could endanger the tenuous truce, which the Trump administration helped cement.

A Syrian war monitor said Friday that gunmen loyal to the government "executed" nearly 70 members of the Alawite minority in Latakia province, where clashes broke out with gunmen loyal to toppled president Bashar al-Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the gunmen executed Alawite men in the towns of Al-Shir, Al-Mukhtariya and Haffah in the Latakia countryside, based on videos it verified, as well as testimonies it received from the victims' relatives.

More than 70 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Syria in fighting between government security forces and militants loyal to deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor said Friday.

"More than 70 killed and dozens wounded and captured in bloody clashes and ambushes on the Syrian coast between members of the Ministry of Defense and Interior and militants from the defunct regime's army," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a post on X.

A Syria war monitor said Wednesday that four civilians had been killed in a security operation in a former pro-government bastion this week, while clashes in the south had left at least seven security personnel and gunmen dead.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance in Syria have killed or injured at least 188 children since president Bashar al-Assad's overthrow in December, the Save the Children charity said Thursday.