An assailant has stabbed three clerics at the most revered Shiite site in Iran, according to Iranian state-run media, killing one and injuring two before he was arrested. The motive for the attack remained unclear.

One cleric died almost instantly after being stabbed at the Imam Reza shrine, a major pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims in Iran's holy northeast city of Mashhad. Two others were hospitalized, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Digital-rights researchers have concluded that the mobile phones of four Jordanian human rights activists were hacked over a two-year period with software made by the Israeli spyware company NSO Group.

Tuesday's findings by Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab said at least some of the hackings appear to have been carried out by the Jordanian government. It was the latest in a series of reports linking NSO's Pegasus spyware software to abuses by authoritarian governments.

Israel will allow women, children and men over 40 from the West Bank to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Friday in an apparent bid to help calm tensions during the holy month of Ramadan.

The government said in a statement that it could further relax restrictions if things stay quiet. The use of incentives around the flashpoint shrine, built on a hilltop compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount, comes a year after flare-ups led to the Israel-Gaza war in May.

President Emmanuel Macron is the clear favorite in France's presidential race Sunday yet a big unknown factor may prove decisive: an unprecedented proportion of people say they are unsure who to vote for or don't intend to vote at all, bringing a large dose of uncertainty to the election.

The pro-European centrist is still comfortably leading in the polls. His main challenger, far-right leader Marine Le Pen, appears on the rise in recent days. Both are in good position to reach the presidential runoff on April 24, which would make them replay the 2017 election that Macron won handily.

The United Arab Emirates has sentenced an Israeli woman to death for cocaine possession, in a major test of new relations between the Mideast countries.

Israel's Foreign Ministry confirmed that it is working on the case of the woman, identified by her lawyer as Fida Kiwan. News reports said she is a 43-year-old Haifa resident who owns a photography studio. She was sentenced on Monday, said attorney Tami Olman.

The United States, United Kingdom and the European Union were set Wednesday to impose new punishing sanctions targeting Russia, including a ban on all new investment in the country and an EU embargo on coal, after evidence of torture and killings emerged in recent days from a town outside of Kyiv.

Videos and images of bodies in the streets of Bucha after it was recaptured from Russian forces have unleashed a wave of indignation among Western allies, who have drawn up new sanctions as a response.

An Israeli lawmaker quit the government's wafer-thin ruling coalition over a religious dispute on Wednesday, throwing the fragile alliance into disarray without a majority in parliament.

Backbencher Idit Silman's departure raises the possibility of new parliamentary elections less than a year after the government took office. While Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's government remains in power, it is now hamstrung in the 120-seat parliament and will likely struggle to function.

Pope Francis is set to visit Lebanon in June, the country's presidency has said, amid spiraling financial and political crises in the tiny nation.

Rabih Alameddine's "The Wrong End of the Telescope," a novel written in the second person about a transgender doctor named Mina who works in a refugee camp for Syrians, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction.

"This novel explores the complexities of the refugees' lives and the intricacies of Mina's relationships, examines the many angles of a timely and vital subject, and probes the life-changing choices humans are forced to make," according to a statement issued Tuesday by award judges. "The exquisite language suspends time and investigates the intricacies of seeking refuge, both from geopolitical disruptions and from one's own patterns of life."

Two of naturalist Charles Darwin's notebooks that were reported stolen from Cambridge University's library have been returned, two decades after they disappeared.

The university said Tuesday that the manuscripts were left in the library inside a pink gift bag, along with a note wishing the librarian a Happy Easter.