Mena Today

Five new Qadis - judges of Islamic law - were sworn in to serve in Israel's Sharia courts during a ceremony held today at the President's Residence in Jerusalem.

Russia hopes by mid-July to have a commercial logistics hub up and running in one of two berths at the naval base it leases in the Syrian port of Tartous, while keeping a military presence at the other, Syrian officials told Reuters.

The funeral procession of Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei approached the country's holiest shrine for his burial on Thursday with a massive banner reading 'We Will Kill Trump' pulled alongside in the enormous crowd. 

Member states handed back Syria's voting rights at the global chemical weapons watchdog on Thursday, following what they described as "a significant change in circumstances" since the fall of the Assad regime.

Belgium's prime minister was a little surprised on landing back home from Wednesday's NATO summit in Turkey to find that he had a handgun and ammunition in his luggage.

Iran fired 10 ballistic missiles at Jordan's Azraq military base on Thursday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by state media.

The U.S. military said on Thursday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war.

Turkey put on a red-white-and-blue air show and named a new airport building after President Donald Trump, seeking to take its relationship with the U.S. to new heights at a NATO summit in Ankara, even as the U.S. leader lashed out at others in the defence alliance. 

The U.S. military said on Wednesday that it was launching fresh strikes on Iran aimed at keeping the critical Strait of Hormuz open to traffic, hours after President Donald Trump declared that an interim agreement to end the war with Iran was "over."

President Donald Trump on Wednesday informed his Syrian counterpart Ahmed al-Sharaa that he had decided to remove the country from the U.S. list of designated state sponsors of terrorism.

Control over the Strait of Hormuz has become a "golden weapon" to Iran, for which it is willing to risk new escalations with the United States, and is a bigger priority than a nuclear programme for which it accepted decades of sanctions.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that NATO allies must lift defence-industry restrictions among them, pressing the case for Ankara to break into some Europe-only initiatives.