Saudi authorities arrested four members of the notorious religious police who allegedly caused the death of a man and the injury of his wife and two children in a car chase, local media reported on Monday.

"Security services arrested four members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice after they were interrogated (on Sunday) over the chase that killed a man and injured his wife and two children in al-Baha" in the southwest, Okaz daily reported.

A government-appointed committee has recommended that Israel legalize dozens of unsanctioned West Bank settlement outposts, a member of the panel said Monday, in defiance of international opposition to settling on land the Palestinians want for their future state.

The panel of jurists, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy, also concluded that the West Bank is not occupied territory and therefore Israel has the legal right to settle it, according to Alan Baker, one of the committee members.

A Jerusalem court on Monday sentenced two Israeli police officers to 30 months in jail for negligence over the death of a Palestinian car thief in 2008, Haaretz newspaper reported.

Omar Abu Jariban died after being left, injured and confused, on the side of a road. He had illegally entered Israel from Gaza and was seriously injured after a car he had stolen rolled over on a highway.

The sons of ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak appeared in court to face a new corruption trial on Monday, after the two were acquitted in another case.

Dressed in white prison outfits, Alaa and Gamal -- once the symbols of wealth and power -- faced accusations of insider trading along with seven other defendants.

Russia on Monday hosted a delegation led by top Syrian dissident Michel Kilo for talks as Moscow comes under growing pressure from the West to halt all support for the regime of Bashar Assad.

Kilo's visit to Moscow comes ahead of a similar trip later this week by the head of the opposition Syrian National Council in a rare flurry of diplomacy between Moscow and the Syrian opposition against Assad's regime.

Syria's army pounded besieged, rebel-held districts of Homs city as troops and rebels clashed across the country on Monday, a watchdog said, adding that 14 people were killed in violence.

"Regime troops continue to shell the Khaldiyeh, Jurat al-Shiah and the Old City neighborhoods of Homs," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Electoral authorities were finalizing the vote count on Monday from Libya's first free polls in decades as an architect of the revolt that toppled Moamer Kadhafi called for national unity talks.

Mahmud Jibril of the National Forces Alliances, which is said to be trending well based on preliminary unofficial figures from the weekend election for a national assembly, called for all parties to come together.

Senator John McCain accused President Barack Obama and his administration on Sunday of leading a "shameful and disgraceful" U.S. response to the bloodshed in Syria.

"The fact is, the United States has played no leadership role," the influential senator and former Republican presidential candidate told CBS television, referring to efforts to halt the brutal 16-month crackdown.

Iran's deputy foreign minister said on Sunday that forcing Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down and go into exile would be a "joke," warning an attack on his country would be "stupid" and "catastrophic."

"Iran supports Assad's reform plans and the talk about forcing him to go into exile is a joke," Hossein Amir Abdollahian told reporters in Amman, where he invited King Abdullah II to attend an August summit of Non-Aligned Movement.

Syrian President Bashar Assad accused the United States of assisting "gangs" to destabilize his country, in a rare interview with a western television channel aired on Sunday.

The United States is "part of the conflict. They offer the umbrella and political support to those gangs to... destabilize Syria," Assad told German public broadcaster ARD.