Switzerland confirmed on Thursday that one of its nationals taken hostage in Yemen a year ago has been freed and has arrived in the Qatari capital Doha.

Swiss news agency ATS said Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter had already spoken to the woman by telephone.

An Iraqi Airways plane landed in Kuwait City on Wednesday for the first time since Iraq's invasion of the emirate in August 1990, after a commercial dispute was resolved.

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and Transport Minister Hadi al-Amari flew in on an Airbus A320, to a welcome from Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah.

Libya said on Wednesday it will ask the U.N. Security Council to lift an embargo on arms imports to the instability-wracked North African country.

"At my meeting next week with the U.N. Security Council president, I will discuss the question of lifting the embargo," said Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, quoted by the official news agency LANA.

Israeli police on Wednesday confirmed they were investigating an apparent hate crime against an Arab woman in Jerusalem and said a policeman had been dismissed after praising the attack on Facebook.

The attack took place on Monday at one of the light rail stops in west Jerusalem, with an Israeli bystander capturing the event on camera then posting the account along with 14 photographs on her own Facebook page.

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar, the top religious authority for Sunni Muslims, on Wednesday urged Islamist militants in the Philippines to free a reporter with al-Arabiya news channel seized in June.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb called upon kidnappers to "revert to right and religious principles... which stress that kidnapping and terrorism are prohibited," in a statement released by his office in Egypt's capital.

The lack of clear leader among Syria's opposition is no reason to maintain support for the "cruel" regime of President Bashar Assad, Turkey's prime minister said Wednesday.

"The international community thus far unfortunately has not taken the kind of position it was expected to take," Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a U.N. event in Vienna.

People angry over the allocation of subsidized housing have clashed with police in a town east of the Algerian capital, leaving 52 people injured, an Agence France Presse correspondent said on Wednesday.

Rioters sacked the mayor's office in Bodj Bou Arreridj, 230 kilometers (145 miles) from the capital, and partly blocked a motorway, causing tailbacks.

If Iran does not heed calls to halt its nuclear program, it should face "military sanction," Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday in an apparent reference to a military strike.

"Iran is continuing to defy the international community, (and) doesn't seem to seek an end to its military nuclear program," the Israeli prime minister said during talks with visiting Sri Lankan Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday the United States and France were mulling ways to speed up political transition in war-torn Syria, which would be discussed in a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Rome.

"We are examining ways to accelerate the political transition,", Kerry said, addressing a joint press conference with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. He said this would be discussed at the Rome meeting Thursday.

The Syrian regime has decided to renew the passports of any of nationals in embassies abroad, in an apparent concession to the opposition, according to documents seen by Agence France Presse.

The interior ministry said in a circular that it has authorized "the renewal for two to four years of passports and travel documents belonging to Syrian citizens abroad".