The UK government on Thursday slapped new sanctions on all of Russia's top 10 oil producers ramping up pressure on Moscow over the Ukraine war.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham said he was unveiling "a sweep of stinging new sanctions to turn the screws on Russia's oil revenues and drive forward an end to the Kremlin's needless war" as European leaders met in Dublin for talks focused on the conflict.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he was directing Vice President JD Vance to focus solely on domestic anti-fraud efforts and not negotiations with Tehran.

"We don't need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we've got their Strait!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Israeli caretaker Defense Minister Israel Katz said Thursday that the outgoing coalition does not need permission from the opposition to decide on fresh military operations, following calls to show restraint.

"We do not need approval from the opposition or any legal authority" for the army to carry out strikes in any of the arenas where it operates, Katz wrote on X.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said diplomacy should resume "without further delay" to end the U.S.-Iran war after talks with his Iranian counterpart.

Erdogan met Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of U.N. climate conference in the Turkish province of Antalya, his office said.

Iraq will send a delegation to Lebanon to support the probe into the killing of a former lawmaker in Beirut, a security official told AFP on Wednesday.

Former Sunni Iraqi politician Ahmed al-Alwani was found strangled to death in a Beirut apartment on Monday night.

Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem hailed on Wednesday President Donald Trump's recent midterm defeat, describing it as "an opportunity" for his Iran-backed Lebanese movement and other opponents of the U.S. in the region.

Trump's Republican Party suffered massive losses in last week's elections, in which the Democrats seized control of Congress.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said a tanker caught fire early Wednesday after striking a naval mine while traveling along an unauthorized route through the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway, Iranian state media reported.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center, a British military agency that monitors maritime safety, said a tanker was involved in an incident while transiting the strait.

More than one million people in Lebanon face acute food insecurity, the United Nations warned on Wednesday, following years of war and economic crisis.

Lebanon has endured two successive wars with neighboring Israel since 2023 and remains mired in an unprecedented economic collapse triggered seven years ago.

Large crowds gathered in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Wednesday to mourn the deaths of dozens of people including children, killed last week in strikes blamed on Saudi Arabia.

Mourners prayed at the Mosque of the People in Sanaa, renamed by the Iran-backed Houthis after they took over the capital, chanting "death to America! Death to Israel!" according to an AFP photographer present.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed their biggest ever release of prisoners after two days of U.S.-mediated talks in Abu Dhabi, US envoy Jared Kushner told reporters on Wednesday.

"One of the positives is we agreed that we're going to have the biggest humanitarian release of prisoners, which we're going to finalise the numbers tomorrow," he said.