Italy's chief diplomat has held talks with Egyptian and Arab League officials in Cairo that focused on regional security and the conflict in neighboring Libya, as well as sensitive bilateral issues.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said he raised with Egypt's president the case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian graduate student who was kidnapped, tortured, and killed in Cairo in 2016, and that of Patrick George Zaki, an Egyptian activist studying in Bologna who had been detained for nearly two years.

Iraq's prime minister on Monday replaced the governor of the country's Central Bank following a weekslong plunge of the Iraqi dinar, the state news agency reported.

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani made the move after the governor, Mustafa Ghaleb Mukheef, told him he no longer wishes to stay in the job, the Iraqi News Agency said. Mukheef, who was in the post since 2020, was replaced by Muhsen al-Allaq, a former central bank governor, the agency added.

Tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night to protest plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government to overhaul the judicial system, measures that opponents say imperil Israel's "democratic" foundation.

Israeli media, citing police, said some 100,000 people were out protesting.

An Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian Saturday at a settler farm in the occupied West Bank after an attempted stabbing, the military said, the latest incident as violence surges in the territory.

An assailant tried to knife an Israeli settler during the "attempted stabbing attack" at Sde Efraim farm northwest of Ramallah, it said.

The first batch of cholera vaccines has reached rebel-held areas in the northwest of war-ravaged Syria, where the extremely virulent disease is spreading.

Syria's first outbreak since 2009, which the United Nations and local officials say has killed dozens of people since August, has been attributed in part to dilapidated infrastructure after more than a decade of conflict.

America's prestigious Harvard University has said it would offer a fellowship to a leading human rights advocate after an initial snub over his criticism of Israel sparked a backlash.

The dean of Harvard Kennedy School caused an outcry when it was revealed this month that he had blocked the hiring of long-time former Human Rights Watch (HRW) executive director Kenneth Roth.

Three suicide drones attacked a U.S. base in eastern Syria on Friday, wounding two Syrian opposition fighters, the U.S. military said. No Americans were hurt in the attack.

It was not clear who was behind the drone attack, but Iran-backed fighters in the region have carried out such operations in the past. Sleeper cells of the Islamic State group are also active in the area.

Saudi Arabia will not normalize ties with Israel in the absence of a two-state solution with the Palestinians, the kingdom's top diplomat has said, according to a tweet by the foreign ministry on Friday.

The comments by Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed normalization with Saudi Arabia in talks with White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Jerusalem on Thursday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia in talks with visiting White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Thursday, his office said.

Netanyahu, who returned to office last month with the formation of a new government, was at the helm in 2020 when Israel established ties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco as part of the Abraham Accords.

Israel's attorney general has told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he must fire a key Cabinet ally, in a letter made public Thursday, following a Supreme Court ruling that disqualified him from serving as a government minister.

The letter, sent shortly after Wednesday's court decision, compounds the pressure on Netanyahu to remove Aryeh Deri from the Cabinet and potentially destabilize his coalition government. The letter by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is also likely to exacerbate a dispute over the power of the judicial system and the government's bid to overhaul it.