Forty-four migrants, including women and children, plucked from their stricken vessel in the Mediterranean arrived in Malta Tuesday after charity boat Alan Kurdi handed the shipwreck victims over to the Maltese coastguard on the high-seas.

Egypt on Tuesday warned Turkey against escalating tensions in the eastern Mediterranean over its attempt to drill for oil and gas in the waters off Cyprus.

A court run by Yemen's Huthi rebels Tuesday sentenced 30 academics, trade unionists and preachers to death for allegedly spying for the Saudi-led coalition, a judicial source said.

Saudi Arabia says it has intercepted a drone launched by Yemen's Houthi rebels targeting "civilian infrastructure" in the kingdom.

The announcement on the state-run Saudi Press Agency early Tuesday did not identify what the drone targeted.

The sister of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia faces a verdict Tuesday in a French trial over the alleged beating of a workman who was refurbishing her ultra-luxury apartment in Paris. 

Hassa bint Salman, sister of powerful Mohammed bin Salman who is known by his initial "MBS", stands accused of ordering her bodyguard to beat up the workman after he was seen taking a photo inside her home in September 2016.

Yemeni rebels Tuesday called for the full withdrawal of the Saudi-led military coalition after the UAE, a key part of that coalition, said it had begun reducing its deployment. 

Algerian authorities on Monday placed in preventive detention a former cabinet minister under ousted president Abdelaziz Bouteflika on suspicion of squandering public funds, state television said.

Moroccan police seized a "record" 27.3 tons of cannabis resin hidden in trucks bound for Europe, the country's security service said Monday.

The United Arab Emirates said on Monday it was reducing the number of troops in war-torn Yemen and moving from a "military-first" strategy to a "peace-first" plan.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has replaced some heads of influential security agencies, including Maj. Gen. Jamil Hassan, who has headed the powerful Air Force Intelligence Directorate since 2009, pro-government Syrian pages on social media reported Sunday.

No reason was given for the shake-up, which came as government forces have made little progress in a two-month-old offensive against rebels in the northwestern Idlib province despite recapturing wide areas of the country in recent years.