The novel coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 20,000 people across the Middle East, half of them in Iran, according to an AFP tally at 1000 GMT Sunday based on official tolls.

He has ridden in a cycle rally in the Emirates, recruited star cyclist Chris Froome to Israel's Tour de France team and was mentor to the first Israeli Formula One driver.

The U.N. Security Council has passed a resolution to restart cross-border humanitarian aid to Syria, but only after caving to Russian pressure to close one of two access points into the war-torn country.

Daniel Gold, who led the team that invented Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, has a history of safeguarding the country against what he identifies as existential threats. 

At least two doctors in Syria's opposition-held northwest have been infected with the coronavirus, according to a monitoring group Saturday, raising the total number of cases in the overcrowded rebel enclave to three.

The Syrian opposition and militant groups control the Idlib area, which is home to more than 3 million people, most of them displaced by the war and living in tent camps and overcrowded facilities. Local health facilities have been targeted in Syrian government attacks that have recently displaced nearly a further million people.

The UN Security Council failed to find a consensus on prolonging cross-border humanitarian aid to Syria on Friday after Russia and China vetoed an extension and members rejected a counter proposal by Moscow.

Without an agreement, authorization for the transport of aid to war-torn Syria, which has existed since 2014, expired Friday night.

Emmanuel Macron asked Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from annexing Palestinian territory in the West Bank and elsewhere during a telephone call between the two leaders, the French president's office said on Friday.

The UN will announce Friday the  results of a vote on a resolution to prolong cross-border humanitarian aid to war-torn Syria, the authorization for which expires that evening. 

With an unprecedented new surge in coronavirus cases battering Israel's economy, one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest confidants was dispatched to a TV studio recently to calm the nerves of a jittery nation. Instead, he dismissed expressions of some of the public's economic pain as "BS."

The flippant comment by Cabinet minister Tzachi Hanegbi is symptomatic of what critics see as a bloated, out-of-touch government. It also has become a rallying cry for anti-Netanyahu protests spreading, like the virus, across the country.

Iran's military chief has signed an agreement with Syria's president to reinforce Syria's air defense systems as part of a military cooperation agreement, Iranian state TV reported Friday.

Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, met with Syria President Bashar Assad during his second visit to Syria since 2019.