Thousands of people gathered in the Lebanese capital Wednesday to commemorate the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri and urge his son Saad to make a political comeback.

Waving the pale-blue flags of Saad Hariri's political party the al-Mustaqbal Movement, the crowd clapped and cheered as he paid his respects at his father's tomb in central Beirut.

Cyprus has said it is in discussions with Lebanon over the return of 116 Syrian migrants rescued off its coast after Beirut refused to accept them back.

The migrants were rescued in international waters 30 nautical miles off Cyprus at the weekend after departing Lebanon by boat, Cypriot officials said.

Israeli municipal elections in areas near the Lebanese border and the Gaza Strip are expected to be postponed from February 27 to November 19, after a parliamentary committee recommended it Tuesday.

"The internal affairs committee of the Knesset (parliament) has decided to support the interior minister's proposal to postpone the elections to November 19, 2024 in the nine areas evacuated by the government decision," it said in a statement.

Israel's army Tuesday released a video it said was of Hamas's chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, filmed on October 10 with his family members in a tunnel in the Palestinian territory.

Two explosions struck gas pipelines in Iran early Wednesday in an act of "terrorism and sabotage" that disputed gas supplies in three of the country's provinces, state media reported.

Negotiations to pause the Israel-Hamas war and free the remaining hostages headed into a second day in Cairo on Wednesday, as displaced Gazans braced for an expected Israeli assault on their last refuge of Rafah.

A Hamas source told AFP that a delegation was headed to the Egyptian capital to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators, after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.

CIA director William Burns, Mossad chief David Barnea and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani met Egyptian officials in Cairo Tuesday "to discuss a truce in Gaza", Egyptian media reported.

Al-Qahera News, which has links to Egyptian intelligence, reported the "quartet meeting" as international pressure grows for a truce between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Ecological activist Greta Thunberg Sunday joined a protest in the south-west of France against eight planned oil wells, which in theory will be banned in the country by 2040.

The "Stop Petrole Bassin d'Arcachon" group, which opposes oil drilling in the area around the seaside resort of Arcachon, claimed 3,000 showed up for the protest, but police said there were 1,200.

Following the U.N.'s COP28 climate talks in oil-fueled Dubai, the COP29 conference is headed for the historic cradle of oil, Azerbaijan, which is in the midst of a gas boom.

The former Soviet republic of 10 million people brimming with hydrocarbons is on track to increase its gas production by 35 percent in the next 10 years, contrary to efforts to contain global warming.

NATO "cannot be an alliance a la carte," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday after Donald Trump downplayed his commitment to NATO's security umbrella in Europe if he becomes U.S. president again.