A leading Egyptian pro-democracy activist who has been imprisoned for more than 3 1/2 years has obtained a British passport, his family said. The move is likely meant to pressure Egyptian authorities to release him.

Alaa Abdel-Fattah, an outspoken dissident, rose to prominence with the 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that swept the Middle East and in Egypt toppled long-time President Hosni Mubarak. The 40-year old activist spent most of the past decade behind bars and his detention has become a symbol of Egypt's return to autocratic rule.

he besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol yielded up more horrors after six weeks of pummeling by Russian troops, with the mayor saying more than 10,000 civilians have died in the strategic southern port, their corpses "carpeted through the streets."

As Russia pounded targets around Ukraine and prepared for a major assault in the east, the country's leader warned President Vladimir Putin's forces could resort to chemical weapons, and Western officials said they were investigating an unconfirmed claim by a Ukrainian regiment that a poisonous substance was dropped in Mariupol.

Dubai's Water and Electricity Authority, known as DEWA, began trading for the first time on Tuesday, after raising just over $6 billion during its initial public offering, making it the second largest offering ever in the Middle East.

While that figure still trails far below the record $29.4 billion raised by Saudi oil giant Aramco, it marks an inflection point for Dubai at a time when high oil prices are buoying the economies and spending power of energy-producing Gulf Arab states.

Iran on Tuesday summoned Afghanistan's envoy in Tehran over attacks the previous day on Iranian diplomatic missions in the neighboring country, state media in Iran reported.

According to the reports, Iran's foreign ministry summoned the Afghan chargé d'affaires in protest over Monday's attacks on the Iranian Embassy in Kabul and the Iranian Consulate in Herat, where protests had turned aggressive. In Herat, angry Afghan protesters pelted the consulate with rocks.

Rescuers hampered by mud and rain on Tuesday used their bare hands and shovels to search for survivors of landslides that smashed into villages in the central Philippines, as the death toll from tropical storm Megi rose to 42. 

More than 17,000 people fled their homes as the storm pummeled the disaster-prone region in recent days, flooding houses, severing roads and knocking out power.

An explosion ripped through a building in southern Lebanon early on Tuesday, killing one person and wounding several others, a Lebanese security official said.

The blast in the town of Banaafoul, near the port city of Sidon, demolished the two-floor building that had served as the local municipality headquarters and a scout center for the Amal Movement headed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.

Spain's Civil Guard says it is investigating a businessman in the eastern Valencia region who owned a private taxidermy collection with more than 1,000 stuffed animals, including just over 400 from protected species and at least one specimen of a North African oryx, already extinct.

The collection would fetch 29 million euros ($31.5 million) on the black market, the Civil Guard said Sunday in a statement, adding that its owner could be charged with trafficking and other crimes against the environment.

A German Cabinet minister has apologized for taking a long vacation shortly after devastating floods last year in the state where she was then a senior official, but it isn't clear whether the move will help relieve pressure on her.

Anne Spiegel became the minister for families and women in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Cabinet in December. Before that, she was the environment minister and deputy governor of Rhineland-Palatinate state — the region worst hit by floods in July that killed more than 180 people in Germany.

An unusually early heat wave brought more extreme temperatures Monday to a large swath of India's northwest, raising concerns that such weather conditions could become typical.

The India Meteorological Department forecast that the temperature in New Delhi would reach 41.8 degrees Celsius (107.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, nearly eight degrees above normal.

"Dancing With the Stars" will waltz away from its longtime ABC home and over to streaming service Disney+, the network's corporate sibling.

The competition series, which debuted on the broadcast network in 2005, will be on Disney+ starting this fall in the U.S. and Canada, the company said.