Consular services stayed shut at U.S. diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia on Thursday for a fifth straight day because of security fears, the American embassy said.

"Due to heightened security concerns at U.S. diplomatic facilities in Saudi Arabia, consular services will continue to be canceled" at the embassy in Riyadh and consulates general in the west and east of the Gulf kingdom, it said in a message posted on the embassy website.

An Egyptian court Thursday acquitted an interior minister of ousted president Hosni Mubarak of corruption charges, in the last in a string of cases he faced, his lawyer and state media said.

Habib al-Adly was cleared of illegally accumulating around 181 million Egyptian pounds ($25 million/23 million euros) and will be released, his lawyer Mohammed el-Gendy said.

As the man who took the Arab Israeli parties to their single biggest election win of 13 seats, Ayman Odeh dreams of a bigger political future for his community.

The 40-year-old lawyer on Tuesday won his first parliamentary seat at the head of the Arab Joint List -- a bloc formed in response to a new Israeli law that upped the electoral threshold.

France has never faced so great a terrorist threat, its prime minister said Thursday, as he unveiled controversial new laws allowing spies to hoover up phone and Internet data from suspected jihadists.

The measures have been criticized by rights groups and set the government up for potential clashes with Internet companies who are under public pressure to ensure privacy.

A two-state solution to the Middle East conflict will be impossible with an Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said on Thursday.

"Netanyahu's statements against a two-state solution and against a Palestinian state... are proof, if correct, that there is no seriousness in the (future) Israeli government about a political solution that will lead to the establishment of two states," he said a day after the Israeli leader snatched an upset election victory.

Special agents are holding three people suspected of helping armed jihadists launch an attack on a nightclub in Mali's capital in which five people died, government sources said Thursday.

The arrests came 12 days after assailants with grenades and automatic rifles struck La Terrasse, a favored nightspot among Westerners in Bamako, killing three Malians, a Frenchman and a Belgian.

Russia said Thursday it had doubled the number of troops taking part in mass drills ordered by President Vladimir Putin this week to 80,000 in a major show of strength amid tensions with the West over Ukraine.

Putin on Monday ordered drills for more than 40,000 troops in regions spanning the country, from the Arctic to the far east to the volatile southern Caucasus, and ordered nuclear bomber jets to be deployed in Crimea a year after its annexation by Moscow.

Sri Lanka's police Thursday blocked a protest involving dozens of elephants as their owners demanded legal recognition to use the sacred animals at Buddhist pageants and cultural events.

Police put up barriers at the main access roads to parliament, but half a dozen elephants, travelling in trucks, managed to slip through the blockade.

Two people were killed Thursday when assailants threw a bomb at the entrance of a youth leisure center on the outskirts of Cairo, Egyptian police said.

Police investigators could not confirm whether it was a criminal act or part of a bombing campaign by militants since the army's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

A British woman detained in Turkey on suspicion of seeking to join Islamic State (IS) insurgents in Syria was returned home on Thursday and promptly arrested on suspicion of terrorism offenses, police said.

The 21-year-old, identified by Turkish media as Jalila Nadra H., was arrested at Luton airport near London on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said.