Former minister Amir Ohana was elected as Israel's first openly gay speaker of parliament on Thursday, ahead of the swearing in the of new government.

Former Israeli intelligence minister Eli Cohen, an architect of the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, was Thursday nominated as foreign minister by prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.

After five elections that have paralyzed Israeli politics for nearly four years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has finally returned to power with the government he has long coveted: a parliamentary majority of religious and far-right lawmakers who share his hard-line views toward the Palestinians and hostility toward Israel's legal system.

Yet Netanyahu's joy may be short-lived. Putting together his coalition proved to be surprisingly complicated, requiring nearly two months of painstaking negotiations and a series of legal maneuvers just to allow his partners to take office. Among them: newly created Cabinet positions with widespread authority over security and a law allowing a politician on parole for a criminal conviction to be a government minister.

Syrian Kurdish-led forces said Thursday they had launched an offensive against Islamic State group fighters, days after jihadist gunmen launched a deadly prison attack.

Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn into office Thursday, taking the helm of the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israel's history and vowing to implement policies that could cause domestic and regional turmoil and alienate the country's closest allies.

Netanyahu took the oath of office moments after parliament passed a vote of confidence in his new government. His return marks his sixth term in office, continuing his more than decade-long dominance over Israeli politics.

Tunisian prosecutors asked the top judicial body to strip 13 judges of immunity so they can be tried on terror charges, their lawyer said Wednesday, describing the case as "purely political".

The Turkish, Syrian and Russian defense ministers have held previously unannounced talks in Moscow, the Turkish and Russian defense ministries said on Wednesday. It was the first ministerial level meeting between rivals Turkey and Syria since the start of the Syrian conflict 11 years ago.

A Turkish defense ministry statement said the Turkish, Syrian and Russian intelligence chiefs also attended the talks in Moscow which, it said, took place in a "positive atmosphere."

Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has named former general Yoav Galant as defense minister in his upcoming cabinet, a spokesperson for his Likud party said Wednesday.

Kuwait, one of the hottest countries on Earth, has been hit by a rare hail storm that delighted children and their parents, with images of the winter white shared widely on social media Wednesday. 

Benjamin Netanyahu's incoming hard-line government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities on Wednesday, a day before it's set to be sworn into office.

Netanyahu's Likud party released the new government's policy guidelines, the first of which is that it will "advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel — in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria" — the Biblical names for the West Bank.