Libyan lawmakers voted Tuesday to reschedule parliament elections, a spokesman said, a move likely to increase tensions among Libyan rivals already divided over bills regulating planned elections.

Abdullah Bliheg, a spokesman for the legislature, said lawmakers decided to hold parliamentary elections a month after the presidential vote scheduled for late December.

Israel's military chief has vowed to step up actions, including covert operations, against Iran and its nuclear program.

Speaking at a ceremony, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi said Israel and its intelligence community "is working against Iranian regional entrenchment throughout the Middle East."

Among the candidates running in Iraq's general elections this week is a leader in one of the country's most hardline and powerful militias with close ties to Iran who once battled U.S. troops.

Hussein Muanis joins a long list of candidates from among Iran-backed Shiite factions vying for parliament seats. But he is the first to be openly affiliated with Kataib Hizbullah, or Hizbullah Brigades, signaling the militant group's formal entry into politics.

Recent visits by three Israeli cabinet ministers to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas indicate both sides are keen to promote stability and improve ties, even if peace talks remain off the table for now.

The Israeli coalition led by hardline nationalist Prime Minister Naftali Bennett -- which includes left-wingers and Islamists -- has no common position on ending the decades-long Palestinian conflict, complicating any formal diplomatic negotiations. 

Iraq will hold early elections Sunday as a concession to a youth-led protest movement, but in Nasiriyah, the city at the heart of the revolt, most young people won't vote.

Ahead of the parliamentary polls, the mood in Nasiriyah and much of Iraq is somber with little hope the election will bring much-needed change to the war-scarred country.

Jordan's King Abdullah II was meeting with the World Bank president, asking for more financial support for his country's battered economy, just around the time the news broke: A trove of leaked documents revealed the king had secretly bought more than a dozen luxury homes in the U.S. and Britain for over $100 million in the past decade.

Abdullah was one of scores of public figures identified as holders of hidden offshore accounts. But perhaps nowhere was there a more evident contradiction between the public man and the private one, for the king has carefully cultivated an image as a caring father of a struggling nation, and it turns out he has amassed an empire of luxury real estate.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday he hoped that tensions with Algeria would ease following his critical comments about the country's leaders and a row about visas.

"My wish is for a calming down because I think it's better to talk and to make progress," Macron told the France Inter broadcaster, adding that his relations with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune were "truly cordial".

Investigators commissioned by the United Nations' top human rights body to examine possible abuses in Libya said Monday they have turned up evidence of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the restive North African country.

The first findings from a "fact-finding mission" commissioned by the Human Rights Council, which were released on Monday, chronicle accounts of crimes like murder, torture, enslavement, extrajudicial killings and rape. The findings could send a potent signal to key international and regional powers amid violence and mistreatment that has wracked Libya since the fall of former autocrat Moammar Gadhafi a decade ago.

Jordan's royal court Monday rejected as "distorted" claims made in the "Pandora Papers" that King Abdullah II created a network of offshore companies to build a $100 million overseas property empire.

It said that the reports "included inaccuracies and distorted and exaggerated the facts", and that revealing the properties' addresses was "a flagrant security breach and a threat to His Majesty's and his family's safety".

The Palestinian president hosted two Israeli Cabinet ministers for a late-night meeting Sunday, in a new sign of slowly improving ties between the sides.

Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz and Regional Cooperation Minister Esawi Freij were the second group of Cabinet members to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas since the new Israeli government took office in June. Defense Minister Benny Gantz also met with Abbas at his West Bank headquarters in August.