Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will to travel to Saudi Arabia on Thursday in a major reset of relations between two regional heavyweights following the slaying of a Saudi columnist in Istanbul.

It marks the latest leg of Ankara's bridge-building efforts with regional rivals. It will be Erdogan's first visit to the kingdom since 2017, the year before Jamal Khashoggi's killing.

A former top-ranking State Department official is set to plead guilty for improperly helping a wealthy Gulf country try to influence U.S. policy and not disclosing on a government ethics form gifts he received from a disgraced political fundraiser.

Court records filed earlier this month say that Richard G. Olson, who was the State Department's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the end of the Obama administration, provided "aid and advice" to Qatar on lobbying activities in violation of a "revolving door" prohibition against such behavior for one year after leaving public service.

The European Union moved Wednesday to lift visa requirements for people from Qatar and Kuwait to make it easier for them to enter many European countries for stays of up to 90 days.

The EU's executive branch, the European Commission, said it recommended allowing people from the two Mideast countries who hold biometric passports to enter without visas for short stays.

As Egyptians mark the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, they are being treated to a blockbuster TV series that celebrates their army marshal turned president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

Fans hail "Al-Ikhtiyar 3" (The Choice 3) for enlightening the masses about Egypt's turbulent recent history. Critics see it as propaganda by a regime that rules with an iron fist.

Israeli police said Tuesday they have launched an investigation into a death threat made against the country's prime minister.

The police issued a statement saying that a letter containing a death threat and a live bullet was sent to Naftali Bennett's family. The police said the special crimes department and the Shin Bet internal security agency opened an investigation.

Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man and wounded three others in West Bank clashes early Wednesday, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said, a day after the fatal shooting of another Palestinian.

The Israeli army told AFP it was "conducting counterterrorism activity" in the city of Jenin, but did not comment on any casualties.

Israeli air strikes near Damascus on Wednesday killed nine combatants, among them five Syrian soldiers, in the deadliest such raid since the start of 2022, a war monitor said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an ammunition depot and several positions linked to Iran's military presence in Syria were among the targets.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed Tuesday when a suicide bomber blew himself up during an army raid targeting Islamic State group militants north of Baghdad, security sources said. 

A trapped militant "detonated his explosives belt, killing a major and another soldier, also wounding three others", an interior ministry source told AFP, asking not to be named.

An Israeli parliamentary committee has sanctioned a breakaway member of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's party, handing a small political victory to the Israeli leader as he seeks to stabilize his fragile government and deter any other rebel lawmakers.

The Knesset committee voted 7-0 on Monday to declare Amichai Chikli a "defector," a status that bars him from joining a rival party in the current parliament in the country's next election. Bennett had requested the vote.

A Palestinian died Tuesday after Israeli forces stormed a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, the latest incident in a wave of violence. 

Ahmed Ibrahim Oweidat, 20, "succumbed to critical wounds sustained by live bullets to the head, at dawn today in Aqabat Jaber camp" which is near Jericho, the ministry said.