Tunisian judges launched a week-long strike Monday in protest at President Kais Saied's "interference" in the judiciary, days after he sacked 57 of their colleagues. 

Saied -- who suspended parliament in a power grab last July -- issued a new decree last week extending his control over the judiciary, his latest move against the only democratic system to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings.

A Kuwaiti supermarket pulled Indian products from its shelves and Iran became the latest Middle Eastern country to summon the Indian ambassador as a row grew on Monday over a ruling party official's remarks about the Prophet Mohammed.

Workers at the Al-Ardiya Co-Operative Society store piled Indian tea and other products into trolleys in a protest against comments denounced as "Islamophobic".

Saudi Arabia has begun compensating residents who lost property to a massive redevelopment project in the coastal city of Jeddah that has spurred rare expressions of public anger, state media said. 

"The delivery of the first batch of compensation for the removed properties has begun," the official Saudi Press Agency said in a report late Sunday, though it did not specify how many people had been compensated so far.

It's not a bomb or a gun or a rocket. The latest threat identified by Israel is the Palestinian flag.

Recent weeks have seen a furor by nationalists over the waving of the red, white, green and black flag by Palestinians in Israel and in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett warned the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Friday that Israel was prepared to use it's "right to self defense" to stop Iran's nuclear program.

The comments came after IAEA chief Rafael Grossi met Bennett Friday morning during a whirlwind visit.

Kuwait's foreign ministry summoned the top U.S. diplomat in the Gulf Arab emirate over American embassy posts on social media in "support of homosexuality", it said on Friday.

The U.S. embassy in Kuwait had published a picture of an LGBTQ+ flag on its Instagram and Twitter accounts to mark the start of Pride Month on June 1.

Thousands of people have attended the annual Jerusalem Pride Parade amid heavy protection by Israeli police, who arrested three people suspected of threatening the event.

Past years have seen religious radicals attack participants. Jerusalem is home to a large ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and other conservative religious groups, and many residents oppose the event.

Israeli police arrested dozens of Palestinians but no Jews during a nationalist march through Jerusalem this week in which crowds of Jews chanted racist slogans, assaulted Palestinians and vandalized Palestinian property, an Israeli newspaper reported.

Israeli police had said after Sunday's march that over 60 people were arrested, but have refused to give a breakdown, despite queries by The Associated Press. The Haaretz daily reported Thursday that it checked arrest records name by name, and found that no Jews were among those detained. It said two Jews were arrested in a separate, related incident.

In northern Syria, residents are bracing for a new fight. With the world's attention focused on the war in Ukraine, Turkey's leader says he's planning a major military operation to push back Syrian Kurdish fighters and create a long sought-after buffer zone in the border area.

Tensions are high. Hardly a day passes by without an exchange of fire and shelling between the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters, and Turkish forces and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition gunmen.

U.S. President Joe Biden will visit Saudi Arabia this month, reports said Thursday, a stark reversal for a leader who once called for the kingdom to be made a pariah.

The reported decision comes hours after Saudi Arabia addressed two of Biden's priorities by agreeing to a production hike in oil and helping extend a truce in war-battered Yemen.