Egyptian-Palestinian human rights activist Ramy Shaath arrived in Paris and reunited with his wife on Saturday, after Egyptian authorities released him from prison and deported him.

An overjoyed Shaath, the son of a prominent Palestinian politician, walked out of the Charles de Gaulle airport smiling, holding hands with his wife, Céline Lebrun Shaath, a French national, and waving to a cheering crowd of supporters.

The United Nations found thousands of weapons recently seized in the Arabian Sea likely came from a single port in Iran, evidence Tehran is exporting arms to Yemen and elsewhere, The Wall Street Journal reported.

A Tunisian ex-justice minister who launched a hunger strike after his arrest a week ago is "stable" in hospital, a doctor said Friday, as Human Rights Watch demanded his release.

Noureddine Bhiri, 63, of the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party, was arrested by plainclothes police officers last Friday and later accused of possible "terrorism" offences.

Employees and schoolchildren juggled work and studies with weekly Muslim prayers on the first ever working Friday in the United Arab Emirates as the Gulf country formally switched to a Saturday-Sunday weekend.

Some grumbled at the change and businesses were split, with many moving to the Western-style weekend but other private firms sticking with Fridays and Saturdays, as in other Gulf states.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Friday a day of mourning after truck and a van collided on a narrow two-lane highway in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, killing eight Palestinians and injuring another two.

Thousands of Palestinian laborers work in Jewish settlements along Highway 90, which runs through the Jordan Valley.

A New York man has been arrested on charges that he worked as a secret and unregistered agent of the Egyptian government, including by sharing information with American law enforcement officials about political opponents of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, the Justice Department said.

Pierre Girgis, a 39-year-old dual citizen of Egypt and the United States, is charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government without notifying the Justice Department, and with conspiring to do so.

A senior Army three-star general with extensive experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been nominated to become the top U.S. commander for the Middle East.

President Joe Biden has nominated Army Lt. Gen. Erik Kurilla to head U.S. Central Command and be promoted to four-star general, according to multiple U.S. officials.

Poland's most powerful politician has acknowledged that the country bought advanced spyware from the Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group, but denied that it was being used to target his political opponents.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, said in an interview that the software, Pegasus, is now being used by secret services in many countries to combat crime and corruption. He noted that Pegasus represents a technological advancement over earlier monitoring systems, which did not allow the services to monitor encrypted messages.

Israeli tanks fired on suspects along the Syrian border in the Golan Heights after they were detected near Israeli forces, the Israeli military said.

Algeria's ambassador to Paris is to resume his post after he was recalled in October following comments by French President Emmanuel Macron that Algiers deemed offensive, the presidency said Wednesday.