Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Wednesday she is optimistic that Egypt may release jailed Australian journalist Peter Greste within days.

Greste and two Al-Jazeera colleagues -- Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohamed -- were sentenced in June to seven years in jail for defaming Egypt and aiding banned Islamists.

An Egyptian jihadist group released video footage on Tuesday that it said showed the execution of two army informants in the insurgent flashpoint of the Sinai Peninsula.

Tunisia's new leader Beji Caid Essebsi said the country has turned the page on dictatorship after a presidential vote that European observers hailed on Tuesday as "credible and transparent."

Sudan's electoral body said Tuesday it postponed elections to allow parliament to consider a constitutional amendment allowing President Omar al-Bashir to appoint state governors who were to have been elected.

Women and girls from Iraq's Yazidi religious minority have told rights activists they were beaten and forced into sexual slavery by the Islamic State jihadist group, driving some to suicide.

IS militants have overrun swathes of Iraq since June, declared a cross-border caliphate also encompassing parts of neighboring Syria and carried out a litany of abuses in both countries.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas warned on Tuesday that his administration would "no longer deal" with Israel if a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a final peace deal fails.

"If the Arab-Palestinian initiative submitted to the Security Council to put an end to (Israeli) occupation doesn't pass, we will be forced to take the necessary political and legal decisions," Abbas was quoted as saying by the Algerian APS news agency.

A prominent Egyptian satirist has been fined millions of dollars over a dispute with a television channel which suspended his show after it lampooned military leaders, officials said Tuesday.

Bassem Youssef, often compared to U.S. satirist Jon Stewart, moved Al-Bernameg (The Program) to Saudi-owned channel MBC last year after it was pulled by the private Egyptian broadcaster CBC.

Egypt kept its Rafah border crossing with Gaza open for a third day on Tuesday, state media said, after nearly 2,000 people used the terminal in the first two days.

The Rafah crossing, the only access point to the Gaza Strip not controlled by Israel, opened on Sunday for only the second time in two months to allow people stranded in Egypt to enter the Palestinian enclave.

Tunisia's presidential vote has been hailed as a landmark, but some veterans of the 2011 revolution fear the victory of an 88-year-old from the old guard will bring a return to repression.

For his opponents, Beji Caid Essebsi's win in Sunday's run-off against incumbent Moncef Marzouki soured what was seen as the culmination of the transition to democracy in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

Recent fighting in Libya has killed hundreds of civilians and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes, the U.N. said Tuesday, demanding justice for serious rights violations and possible "war crimes".

In a joint report, the U.N. human rights office and the U.N. Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) warned of surging violence across the country since May and widespread human rights violations, including abductions of civilians, torture and executions.