A former U.S. Air Force mechanic pleaded not guilty in New York on Wednesday to attempting to support extremists fighting in Syria, and could face trial as early as July.

Tairod Pugh, 47, appeared before federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis, the burly Muslim convert standing with his hands behind his back, dressed in a navy short-sleeved shirt and khaki trousers.

France condemned Wednesday a bloody armed attack on a museum in the Tunisian capital in which 17 tourists from Poland, Italy, Germany and Spain were killed.

"I condemn this terrorist attack in the strongest terms. There has been a hostage-taking, without doubt tourists have been affected, killed," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in Brussels after talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

A popular Tunisian comedian, a television host and a colleague went on trial Wednesday in a case in which one them allegedly impersonated the president in a telephone conversation with a businessman.

Defense attorney Mounir Ben Salha asked the court to dismiss the case and to free satirist Migalo, whose real name is Wassim Lahrissi, television host Moez Ben Gharbia and Abdelhak Toumi.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas will work with any Israeli government that accepts the principle of a two-state solution, his spokesman said after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a shock reelection victory.

"It doesn't matter to us who the next prime minister of Israel is, what we expect from this government is to recognize the two-state solution," Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a statement.

Western governments gave a muted reaction Wednesday to the re-election of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid fears that his increasingly hardline stance has fatally undermined the Middle East peace process.

The EU congratulated Netanyahu on his victory, but said it was committed to relaunching the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians that he rejected in the last days of the campaign.

The Arab League chief dismissed Wednesday as electioneering Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's vow to rule out a Palestinian state if reelected, saying there would be global pressure for a peace deal.

Netanyahu, whose Likud party won 30 seats in the 120-member parliament in Tuesday's vote, had pledged to expand settlements in the occupied West Bank and block creation of a Palestinian state if reelected.

Fourteen companies, including Renault Trucks and Legrand, went on trial Wednesday, accused of siphoning off cash to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime during the "oil for food" program.

The United Nations program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, allowed the regime in Baghdad to export some oil in return for basics such as food and medicine.

Kuwaiti prosecutors said Wednesday they would not press charges against a former prime minister and an ex-parliament speaker over allegations of coup-plotting and corruption.

Public prosecutor Dherar al-Assoussi said in a statement that an investigation had found the accusations against the two former top officials were not supported by evidence.

Some love him, others loathe him but there is one thing they all agree on: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who won a shock victory in Tuesday's election, is a master of political brinkmanship.

Ahead of the vote, which was widely seen as a referendum on his six-year tenure as prime minister, the polls showed his rightwing Likud trailing the center-left Zionist Union by up to four seats.

Gunmen stormed Tunisia's national museum killing 17 foreign tourists and two Tunisians Wednesday in an attack that raised fears for a rare success story of the Arab Spring.

The brazen daytime assault sparked panic at the nearby parliament and the National Bardo Museum, an iconic attraction in a country whose economy depends greatly on tourism.