The Iran judo federation's appeal against a four-year ban from international events for refusing to let its athletes face opponents from Israel was heard on Tuesday.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport said the Iranian appeal against an International Judo Federation ruling was held by video link. A verdict is expected to take at least several weeks.

The United Nations' top envoy for Libya is resigning weeks ahead of presidential elections seen as critical to the country's stability after nearly a decade of chaos, the world body said.

Jan Kubis decided to step down after just 10 months in the job. With the presidential vote set for Dec. 24, the U.N. is "working as quickly as possible to ensure continuity of leadership," spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at a news briefing at U.N. headquarters.

Tech giant Apple has announced it is suing Israel's NSO Group, seeking to block the world's most infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apple's products, like the iPhone.

Apple said in a complaint filed in federal court in California that NSO Group employees are "amoral 21st century mercenaries who have created highly sophisticated cyber-surveillance machinery that invites routine and flagrant abuse." Apple said NSO Group's spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to attack a small number of Apple customers worldwide.

Security forces in Qatar detained two journalists from Norwegian state television for over 30 hours and deleted footage they gathered at a migrant labor camp as they tried to report on worker issues ahead of the FIFA 2022 World Cup, authorities said Wednesday.

Qatar's government later accused NRK journalists Halvor Ekeland and Lokman Ghorbani of "trespassing on private property and filming without a permit" as the two returned early Wednesday to Norway following their arrest. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre responded by saying their arrest was "unacceptable."

The smuggler had said the car would come in 10 minutes, but Zaid Ramadan had been waiting in the dense forest straddling the Poland-Belarus border for three hours, desperate for signs of headlights in the mist — and a new life in Europe.

His pregnant wife Delin shivered under a blanket. She had been against leaving their life in Dohuk, a mountainous province in the northern Kurdish-run region of Iraq. The journey was perilous, expensive and the change too drastic, she told him.

The leaders of three Central European countries have expressed their solidarity with Poland in an ongoing migration crisis on its eastern border with Belarus, and urged the European Union to increase its support for the protection of the bloc's external borders.

At a news briefing in Hungary's capital of Budapest following talks between the prime ministers of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said the situation on his country's eastern border went beyond migration.

Russia's defense chief has signed a roadmap for closer military ties with China, pointing to increasingly frequent U.S. strategic bomber flights near both countries' borders.

During a video call, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe "expressed a shared interest in stepping up strategic military exercises and joint patrols by Russia and China," according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

A Polish imam has recited prayers over the tiny white casket of an unborn Iraqi boy, the latest life claimed as migrants from the Middle East have tried to slip into the European Union illegally and found their path blocked by soldiers in the forests of Poland and Belarus.

After the first snow of the season fell overnight, Aleksander Ali Bazarewicz, the imam, waited in hopes that the child's father — in a refugee center and with his wife hospitalized in serious condition — would arrive. When he didn't appear, Bazarewicz lead the funeral rites in front of an old wooden mosque and later at the graveside.

Armenia has reached an agreement with Azerbaijan to establish a hotline between their defense chiefs after last week's deadly clashes on their border, the Armenian prime minister said.

Nikol Pashinyan said during an online news conference that contacts between Armenian and Azerbaijani officials should become more frequent to "help stabilize the situation, find solutions and try to avoid crises."

Australia on Wednesday listed all of Hizbullah as a "terrorist organization," extending a ban on the armed wing to the entire movement, which wields considerable power in Lebanon.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said that the Tehran-backed group "continues to threaten terrorist attacks and provide support to terrorist organizations" and poses a "real" and "credible" threat to Australia.