Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet Arab leaders at summits in Riyadh on Friday after striking a series of agreements with Saudi Arabia, strengthening ties as the top oil exporter quarrels with Washington.

Arab Gulf countries, strategic partners of Washington, are bolstering ties with China as part of an eastward turn that involves diversifying their fossil fuel-heavy economies. 

As a Gulf-China summit takes place in Riyadh on Friday, AFP examines key areas of economic cooperation between the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council and the world's second-largest economy. 

President Joe Biden said Thursday that the United Arab Emirates facilitated Brittney Griner's release from Russia in a prisoner swap.

Biden thanked the UAE "for helping us facilitate Brittney's return, because that's where she landed" en route back to the United States. Biden said the basketball star would be back home within 24 hours.

World Cup host Qatar is investigating the death of a migrant worker, an official said Thursday, after reports he died at a training base during the ongoing football tournament.

Israel's prime-minister designate Benjamin Netanyahu struck a deal with an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party Thursday on allocating cabinet jobs in a key step towards forming a government ahead of a looming deadline.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince on Thursday on an Arab outreach visit that will yield billions of dollars in deals and has earned a rebuke from Washington. 

About $30 billion in agreements will be signed on Thursday, Saudi state media said, as China seeks to shore up its Covid-hit economy and as the Saudis, long-term U.S. allies, push to diversify their economic and political alliances. 

Israeli troops killed three Palestinians on Thursday in their latest deadly raid on the flashpoint city of Jenin, Palestinian health officials said, as violence surges in the occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces have made near-daily raids across the territory in recent months, many of them deadly, following a series of lethal attacks on Israelis.

Five years after it emerged from the Islamic State group's jihadist rule, Iraq's once thriving cultural center of Mosul has regained a semblance of normalcy despite sluggish reconstruction efforts.

The White House on Wednesday responded to the visit of President Xi Jinping to Saudi Arabia by warning that China's attempt to spread influence worldwide is "not conducive" to international order.

An Iraqi activist was sentenced to three years in prison over alleged criticism of state-sanctioned militias, spurring criticism from human right monitors and local activists.

Hayder al-Zaidi, 20, who was active in popular anti-government protests that began in October 2019, was sentenced in a criminal court in Baghdad over comments on Twitter that he maintains he did not write. He had been charged under a penal code section that outlaws publicly insulting any government institution or official.