A Moroccan appeals court on Monday reduced the sentence of a journalist convicted on Syria-linked terror charges from four to three years, his lawyer told Agence France Presse.

The court reduced journalist Moustapha Hasnaoui's sentence by one year, lawyer Khaled al-Idriss said, after he was convicted on terror charges in July.

Gunmen attacked a central bank van in Libya on Monday, stealing $54 million (40 million euros), in the latest sign of growing lawlessness since the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi.

The official LANA news agency said "10 heavily armed men" had made off with the funds, which were destined for the Libyan central bank branch in the central city of Sirte, and had been flown there from Tripoli.

Egypt's ousted president Mohammed Morsi has rejected the authority of the court that is due to try him next week for incitement to murder, his supporters said Monday.

Morsi, an Islamist hailing from the Muslim Brotherhood who was Egypt's first freely elected leader, was ousted by the military on July 3 amid massive protests against his year-long rule.

Syria is on target to meet a looming deadline to destroy its chemical weapons production equipment, even though inspectors have yet to visit all sites, U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

"The functional destruction of the declared capacity of the Syrian Arab Republic is expected to be completed as planned by November 1," Ban said in a report to the U.N. Security Council obtained by Agence France Presse.

Hackers from a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army claimed Monday they had taken control of U.S. President Barack Obama's Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The group, which backs Syria's government and which has previously hacked accounts of The New York Times, Agence France Presse and other media organizations, published screen shots which it said backed its claims.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who arrived in Damascus Monday, believes President Bashar Assad could contribute to the transition to a "new" Syria, but not as the country's leader.

Brahimi, who was in Syria on the latest leg of a regional tour to rally support for peace talks, spoke about Assad in an interview in Paris with the Jeune Afrique website published Monday.

A Sunni Arab lawmaker was kidnapped by Islamist fighters during clashes with members of his pro-regime tribe in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor, a monitoring group reported Monday.

Fighters from the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group and jihadists from the al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) abducted MP Mohanna Faisal al-Fayyad on Sunday evening, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Egypt's state prosecutor ordered on Monday a probe into a complaint against television satirist Bassem Youssef after his show mocked both the military chief and the formerly ruling Islamists, a judicial source said.

Youssef, known as 'Egypt's Jon Stewart' for modelling his show after the American comedian, debuted a new season on Friday in his first episode since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July.

Human Rights Watch on Monday praised Israel's decision to resume ties with the U.N.'s rights council, which the Jewish state was boycotting over scrutiny of humanitarian issues in occupied Palestinian territories.

"Israel's decision to end its misguided boycott of the U.N. Human Rights Council is a positive step," the New York-based watchdog's Bill Van Esveld said in a statement.

A bomb exploded early Monday outside a reception hall in the restive eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, damaging the building without wounding anyone, security officials said.

"Unknown assailants on Monday morning threw an explosive device at a building housing a reception hall," security forces spokesman Colonel Abdallah al-Zaidi said.