Months after the collapse of U.S.-led efforts to advance Middle East peace, experts say Palestinians and Israelis have finally agreed on at least one thing -- further talks would be futile.

And, as has so often been the case in the intractable conflict, neither side looks set to propose any kind of meaningful alternative.

A Bahrain court lifted Wednesday a travel ban on a prominent activist charged with assaulting airport police as she flew in to try to visit her jailed father, a judicial source said.

Maryam al-Khawaja has been a vocal critic of the Bahrain authorities' crackdown on 2011 protests that led to her opposition leader father Abdulhadi al-Khawaja being jailed for life.

British prosecutors on Wednesday dropped seven terror charges against former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg relating to the conflict in Syria.

The 45-year-old has been in custody since March awaiting a trial, which was due to start on Monday, but is now expected to walk free following his formal acquittal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has complained U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon that a probe by the world body into the Gaza war is one-sided, his foreign ministry said Wednesday.

At a meeting with Ban on Tuesday in New York, Netanyahu charged that the U.N. Human Rights Council "is not focusing its inquiry on Hamas, which used U.N. facilities in order to fire at Israel," a ministry statement said.

Sitting on a hill just a few kilometers from the clashes between Islamic State insurgents and Kurdish militia, a group of Turkish Kurds have found the ideal vantage point to follow the deadly fighting in the distance.

Like spectators watching a sporting event, some munch on sunflower seeds and search for signs of which side has gained the upper hand in the battle raging across the border in Syria.

At least 41 Syrian children aged under 12 were killed Wednesday in a double bombing by a lone assailant at a school in the government-controlled city of Homs, a monitor said.

They were among 48 people who died in the attacks in the Akrameh neighborhood, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, updating an earlier toll.

British fighter jets fired on Islamic State (IS) militants west of Baghdad and in northwest Iraq in two rounds of air strikes Wednesday, the defense ministry in London said.

Two Royal Air Force (RAF) Tornado warplanes based in Cyprus fired four Brimstone missiles on two IS vehicles, including an armed pick-up truck, the ministry said in a statement.

U.S.-led forces carried out at least five air strikes on Wednesday against Islamic State group fighters attacking the Syrian Kurdish town of Ain al-Arab, a monitoring group said.

The strikes hit IS positions south and southeast of the town, known as Kobane by the Kurds, which the jihadists have been battling to take for more than two weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Wednesday his country's military jets were set to join the United States in its war against Islamic State jihadists through support flights over Iraq.

Australia deployed some 600 troops and several aircraft to the United Arab Emirates in mid-September as it geared up to join the U.S.-led international coalition.

A truck lies stranded on its side in a no man's land between Kurdish fighters and jihadists ensconced behind minefields, a stalemate the Kurds hope U.S.-led air strikes can break.