Israel ceremonially opened its gleaming pavilion at the world's fair in Dubai on Thursday, over a year after normalizing ties with the United Arab Emirates and amid a pandemic that has disrupted much of the tourist and cultural exchanges promised by the U.S.-brokered accords.

The pavilion's arch — chock-full of flashy videos promoting Israel's windmills, high-tech advances and historic sights — came to life as night fell. Zany Hebrew music played and patriotic balloons floated — all within eyesight of the Palestinian pavilion nearby.

Fighting over the key Yemeni city of Marib has displaced around 10,000 people in the past month, the U.N. migration agency said Thursday. The clashes escalated as Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels intensified their push to take the provincial capital from government forces.

Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014, when the Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, and forced the country's president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the internationally recognized government to flee to the south, and then later to Saudi Arabia.

A federal magistrate judge in Nevada has sided with Cristiano Ronaldo's lawyers against a woman who sued for more than the $375,000 in hush money she received in 2010 after saying the international soccer star raped her in Las Vegas.

In a scathing recommendation to the judge hearing the case, Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts on Wednesday blamed Kathryn Mayorga's attorney, Leslie Mark Stovall, for inappropriately basing the civil damages lawsuit on leaked and stolen documents shown to be privileged communications between Ronaldo and his lawyers.

Iraqi security personnel across the country cast their ballots Friday, two days before the rest of the nation votes in parliamentary elections.

The vote is being held six months before schedule, in line with a promise made by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi when he assumed office in 2020. He is seeking to appease anti-government protesters who rose up in October 2019 in Baghdad and Iraq's south.

An energy crisis is looming over India as coal supplies grow perilously low, adding to challenges for a recovery in Asia's third largest economy after it was wracked by the pandemic.

Supplies across the majority of coal-fired power plants in India have dwindled to just days worth of stock.

A ruling by a local Israeli court in favor of a Jewish man who prayed quietly at a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site has angered Muslim authorities, who denounced it on Thursday as a violation of the fragile status quo governing the compound.

The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is the third holiest site in Islam and the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the ancient Jewish Temples. It is the emotional epicenter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and tensions there helped ignite the 11-day Gaza war in May. Under informal understandings, Jews are not allowed to pray there.

Japan surprisingly lost 1-0 to Saudi Arabia on Thursday to leave its chances of a seventh successive World Cup appearance hanging in the balance.

Japan has now lost two of the first three games in Group B to sit six points behind Saudi Arabia and leader Australia, who both have the maximum nine. The top two from both six-team groups qualify for next year's tournament in Qatar automatically.

Jordan's foreign minister on Thursday pushed back against a report that the country's monarch, King Abdullah II, went out of his way to hide the purchase of more than a dozen luxury homes worth more than $106 million, saying there was "nothing secretive" about the transactions.

Ayman Safadi also told The Associated Press that none of the billions of dollars of international aid the kingdom has received over the years were used to fund the purchases, and that strict safeguards are in place to prevent any abuses.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI appointed a new government Thursday made up of a coalition of liberal and conservative parties and led by a billionaire businessman.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Aziz Akhanouch of the Rally of National Independents party is made up of 24 ministers, including seven women.

Iran's state TV reported Thursday that speedboats belonging to the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard have intercepted U.S. vessels in the Persian Gulf. A U.S. Navy spokesman said he was not aware of any such encounter at sea over the past days.

The region remains on edge over Iran's escalating nuclear program. Talks in Vienna to revive Tehran's now-tattered 2015 accord with world powers have stalled since June, with no date set for their resumption.