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.

Two Syrian gunmen killed a man Wednesday outside his home in the Bekaa border town of Arsal.

“Young man Ali Ezzeddine, aka Ali Badriyeh, was killed outside his house in the town of Arsal,” state-run National News Agency reported.

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.

Pro-democracy activists from Senegal and Burkina Faso arrested in Democratic Republic of Congo on suspicion of planning to destabilize the country will be expelled and banned from returning, the government announced on Wednesday.

"They will be expelled from the country. They are also being declared persona non grata," DR Congo government spokesman Lambert Mende told AFP. "It's the best solution we could find."

Barack Obama will make his first presidential visit to Jamaica in April, a trip expected to focus on strengthening security in the Caribbean.

The White House said Wednesday that Obama would visit the island nation to meet leaders of the Caribbean bloc CARICOM. 

Public support for Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff plunged to 13 percent after mass protests over the weekend against government corruption, a new poll published on Wednesday found.

The Datafolha poll underscored the swiftness of Rousseff's fall from grace since her re-election to a second term as leader of the South American powerhouse less than three months ago.

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.

A French court handed controversial French comedian Dieudonne a two-month suspended jail sentence on Wednesday for condoning terrorism after a comment suggesting he sympathized with one of the jihadists who attacked Paris.

The polemicist was arrested on January 14 after writing "I feel like Charlie Coulibaly" on Facebook, a mix of the slogan "Je suis Charlie" that became a global rallying cry against extremism and Amedy Coulibaly, one of the assailants who killed a policewoman and four Jews.