A potential undersea pipeline carrying natural gas from deposits in the eastern Mediterranean to Europe is "very realistic" and could help secure the continent's energy future, Israel's energy minister said Tuesday.

Yuval Steinitz said that a study on the "strategic" EastMed Pipeline Project shows that the pipeline is feasible, even though it presents technical challenges due to the depths involved.

Turkey and the Palestinians warned on Tuesday of dire diplomatic repercussions if President Donald Trump goes ahead with a possible recognition of the hotly contested city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told parliament that his country's response "could go as far as us cutting diplomatic ties with Israel."

The United Arab Emirates on Tuesday announced it has formed a new economic and partnership group with Saudi Arabia, separate from the Gulf Cooperation Council — a move that could undermine the council amid a diplomatic crisis with member state Qatar.

The Emirati Foreign Ministry announcement, just hours ahead of a GCC meeting in Kuwait, said the new "joint cooperation committee" was approved by the UAE's ruler and president, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nayhan.

The U.N. is voicing alarm over the spread of HIV in Egypt, where the number of new cases is growing by up to 40 percent a year, and where efforts to combat the epidemic are hampered by social stigma and a lack of funding to address the crisis.

The virus that causes AIDS, U.N. officials say, is infecting more young and adolescent people than any other age group.

The United Arab Emirates on Sunday denied a claim by Yemen's Shiite rebels that a rebel missile had been fired toward the country's under-construction nuclear plant.

The rebels, known as Huthis, earlier in the day claimed they had launched a “winged cruise missile” toward the plant in Abu Dhabi in the first such strike toward the country.

Israel's intelligence minister said Thursday he plans to succeed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is embroiled in corruption scandals and a police investigation.

But Israel Katz said in an interview with The Associated Press he hopes Netanyahu will be able to continue as prime minister, and "that the clouds that are hanging over his head now will pass."

North Korea released dozens of photos Thursday of the Hwasong-15, a new intercontinental ballistic missile it claims can reach any target in the continental United States. The photo dump, published in the paper and online editions of the ruling party's official daily, is a goldmine for rocket experts trying to parse reality from bluster.

Their general conclusion is that it's bigger, more advanced and comes with a domestically made mobile launcher that will make it harder than ever to pre-emptively destroy. But there's a potentially major catch: it might not have the power to go much farther than the West Coast if it is loaded down with a real nuclear warhead, not a dummy like the one it carried in its test launch on Wednesday.

Stoking the same anti-Islam sentiments he fanned on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump on Wednesday retweeted a string of inflammatory videos from a fringe British political group purporting to show violence being committed by Muslims.

The tweets drew a sharp condemnation from British Prime Minister Theresa May's office, which said it was "wrong for the president to have done this." May spokesman James Slack said the far-right Britain First group seeks to divide through its use of "hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions."

Pope Francis on Thursday arrived in Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya refugees have sought sanctuary after fleeing a crackdown in neighbouring Myanmar, in the second stage of a tour dominated by the plight of the persecuted minority.

The pope will spend three days in mainly-Muslim Bangladesh, which is also grappling with a rise in Islamist extremism that has seen Catholics attacked for their faith.

Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince relies on a small core group of advisers, none more provocative than Thamer al-Sabhan, the fiercely anti-Iran government official whose fingerprints were on the hurried and ultimately unsuccessful resignation of Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri earlier this month.

As Saudi minister for Gulf affairs, al-Sabhan has a hand in helping shape the kingdom's high-stakes gambles to counter rival Iran.