The Israeli spyware maker NSO Group is turning to the U.S. Supreme Court as it seeks to head off a high-profile lawsuit filed by the WhatsApp messaging service.

In a filing to the Supreme Court, NSO said it should be recognized as a foreign government agent and therefore be entitled to immunity under U.S. law limiting lawsuits against foreign countries. The request appeals a pair of earlier federal court rulings that rejected similar arguments by the Israeli company.

A leading Egyptian pro-democracy activist who has been imprisoned for more than 3 1/2 years has obtained a British passport, his family said. The move is likely meant to pressure Egyptian authorities to release him.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah, an outspoken dissident, rose to prominence with the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East and in Egypt toppled long-time President Hosni Mubarak. The 40-year old activist spent most of the past decade behind bars and his detention has become a symbol of Egypt's return to autocratic rule.

Fresh clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants rocked the West Bank city of Jenin Tuesday as a Palestinian stabbed a police officer in Israel before being shot dead.

Israeli troops launched a fourth day of operations around Jenin after an assailant from the district shot and killed three people in a Tel Aviv bar last week in an attack that stunned the country.

Jordan's monarch is traveling to Germany Sunday for a spine surgery, Jordan's palace announced.

King Abdullah II, 60, will undergo a surgery to treat "a herniated disk in the thoracic spine" at a hospital in Frankfurt next week, and will return home after a recovery period of one week.

Thousands of Christian pilgrims have taken part in Palm Sunday celebrations in Jerusalem at the start of the Holy Week.

The holiday this year comes as tourists are returning to the Holy Land following two years of disruption during the pandemic. It also is taking place as tensions between Israelis and Palestinians are rising amid a spate of recent Palestinian attacks in Israel that have prompted military raids in the occupied West Bank in response.

Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian man near the city of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said early Monday, the latest in a growing wave of violence that has erupted during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

The Israeli military said it opened fire at a man throwing a firebomb at an Israeli vehicle driving on a West Bank highway late Sunday. The shooting raised to four the number of Palestinians killed in the past 24 hours, among them an unarmed woman who was shot and killed at a military checkpoint near Bethlehem.

Israeli warplanes on Saturday carried out an air raid on targets in central Syria from Lebanon’s airspace, Syrian state media said.

Syria’s air defenses managed to shoot down some of the fired missiles, Syrian news agency SANA reported.

Israeli troops on Saturday raided the West Bank hometown of a Palestinian who carried out a deadly shooting in Tel Aviv, sparking a gunbattle that left at least one Palestinian militant dead, according to Palestinian officials.

The Israeli military said its troops were carrying out what it said was a counterterrorism operation in the city of Jenin and the adjacent Jenin refugee camp. That's the area in the northern West Bank where the gunman in Thursday's attack had lived. It said the troops came under fire and returned fire at the assailants. There were no Israeli casualties and the forces seized an automatic rifle used by one of the militants, the military said.

The new head of Yemen's internationally recognized government has said that the council he was chosen to lead will work to end the country's grinding, eight-year civil war.

In his first televised address, Rashad al-Alimi thanked his government's backers —Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — which have been helping Yemeni government forces fight the Iran-backed Houthi rebels for years.

The U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq said it shot down Friday an armed drone that targeted an air base, reporting no casualties or damage.

"U.S. air defense systems shot down an armed unmanned aerial system entering Al Asad Air Base" early Friday morning, the coalition said in a statement.