For decades, Doha has flung open its doors to Taliban warlords, Islamist dissidents, African rebel commanders and exiles of every stripe.

Now, the tiny emirate is receiving extra scrutiny as it welcomes over a million soccer fans from around the world for the 2022 World Cup.

French oil giant Total said Tuesday it would soon launch exploration activities in search for gas in the Mediterranean Sea off Lebanon's coast, following last month's Lebanon-Israel deal on their maritime border.

According to a statement, TotalEnergies and its partner, Italy's ENI, signed with Israel a so-called "Framework Agreement" to implement the U.S.-mediated border agreement reached last month. Lebanon and Israel have been formally at war since Israel's creation in 1948.

Israel's outgoing coalition has been the most diverse in the country's history, bringing a slew of progressive policies on the environment, LGBTQ issues and funding for the country's Arab minority.

But now, even before it takes office, Israel's expected new coalition government — overwhelmingly male, religious and right-wing — is promising to roll back many of the achievements of its predecessor, prompting concern from activists and liberals over where their country is headed.

The U.S. navy said Tuesday it had scuttled a boat transporting "explosive materials" from Iran to supply Huthi rebels in Yemen, with enough power to fuel a dozen ballistic rockets.

The boat, which the U.S. navy seized on November 8 in the Gulf of Oman was sunk on Sunday, the Bahrain-based United States Fifth Fleet said.

The family of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was likely killed by an Israeli soldier, on Tuesday praised a U.S. decision to open a probe into her death.

"This is an important step," a statement from the Palestinian-American family said, adding that US authorities have a responsibility to investigate, "when a US citizen is killed abroad, especially when they were killed, like Shireen, by a foreign military."

A senior Egyptian diplomat has dismissed as "ludicrous" Monday reports that his country's police have been conducting surveillance of participants at this year's U.N. climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh.

The United Nations said Sunday that it was investigating allegations of misconduct by Egyptian police officers who were part of the force providing security to the global body at the venue. Germany had raised concerns after attendees at events hosted by the country were photographed and filmed.

The family of Egypt's imprisoned hunger-striking activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah said Monday that he has started drinking water again.

The announcement came in a letter that the family received from Abdel-Fattah through the prison authorities on Monday. It was dated on Saturday.

Israeli forces shot and killed a 19-year-old Palestinian woman during a raid in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said Monday.

The Israeli military said soldiers opened fire on a vehicle that was accelerating toward them after they signaled for it to stop, adding that the incident was under review.

Iran launched a wave of cross-border missile and drone strikes Monday against Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq, where local authorities reported one death and eight wounded.  

Tehran previously launched attacks that killed more than a dozen people in Iraq's Kurdistan region in late September, after accusing Kurdish armed groups based there of stoking a wave of unrest that has rocked the Islamic republic.

Israeli airstrikes killed two Syrian soldiers and wounded three others when they slammed into an airbase in the province of Homs, a Syrian army statement said.

The statement said Israeli warplanes fired missiles after flying over neighboring Lebanon. It added that some of the missiles were shot down before they hit their targets.