When it comes to saving sea turtles, Israeli rescuers have discovered that mayonnaise is a miracle.

Employees at Israel's National Sea Turtle Rescue Center are treating endangered green sea turtles affected by a devastating oil spill that has coated Israel's coast with thick black tar.

An Istanbul court on Wednesday sentenced three Turks to four years and two months in prison for helping smuggle former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn in a musical instrument case to Lebanon from Japan.

The court convicted two pilots and an employee of a small private airline, who moved the tycoon while he was out on bail facing financial misconduct charges in December 2019.

Former Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa told a Japanese court Wednesday he believed the compensation for his predecessor Carlos Ghosn was too low "by international standards," and so he supported Ghosn's retirement packages to prevent him from leaving.

"Mr. Ghosn had outstanding abilities and achievements," Saikawa said, testifying in Tokyo District Court in the criminal trial of Greg Kelly, a former senior executive at Nissan Motor Co.

The World Bank threatened Tuesday to suspend financing for coronavirus vaccines in Lebanon over what it said were suspected violations by lawmakers who were inoculated in parliament.

Such a move by the World Bank would have grave consequences as Lebanon struggles through severe financial and economic crises and is in desperate need of aid. The World Bank said last month it approved $34 million to help pay for vaccines for Lebanon that will inoculate over 2 million people. The vaccination campaign in the country began on Feb. 14 and Lebanon has so far received nearly 60,000 shots of Pfizer-BioNTech.

A disastrous oil spill that has blackened most of Israel's shoreline has apparently affected Lebanon and deposits of tar have started washing up in the Lebanese south.

The management of the city of Tyre's coastal nature reserve, one of Lebanon's last remaining sandy beaches and an important nesting site for endangered Loggerhead and Green sea turtles, said the spill could endanger marine life and biodiversity in the area.

Anis Naccache, a former pro-Palestinian militant who participated in the 1975 kidnapping of oil ministers in Vienna, died Monday after battling COVID-19, a Palestinian official and Lebanese media said. He was 69.

Naccache, a Lebanese citizen, participated in attacks around the world but spent much of the past two decades running a Beirut-based think tank and frequently appeared on TV shows as an analyst on Middle Eastern affairs.

The interior minister of Libya's U.N.-backed government survived an ambush by gunmen on his motorcade on Sunday, a brazen attack highlighting the towering challenges that remain for the newly appointed government that is trying to unite the country before elections late this year.

Armed men opened fire at Fathi Bashagha's motorcade on a highway in Tripoli, wounding at least one of his guards, said Amin al-Hashmi, a spokesman for the Tripoli-based Health Ministry.

Three sticky bomb attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least five people and wounded two others, a police official said, amid a surge in violence in the war-torn country.

Kabul police spokesman Ferdaws Faramarz said two explosions caused by sticky bombs attached to vehicles took place 15 minutes apart and a third targeting a police vehicle exploded about two hours later.

The U.N. Security Council has given a green light to keep the U.N.-backed tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri operating and funded for at least this year.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a letter to the council circulated Friday that the president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Judge Ivana Hrdličková, informed him in November that its work wouldn't be finished by the expiration of its mandate Feb. 28.

Lebanon's top judicial body on Friday named a new judge to lead the investigation into last year's massive explosion at Beirut's port, the National News Agency said, a day after his predecessor was removed following legal challenges by former ministers he had accused of negligence that led to the blast.

The Higher Judicial Council named Judge Tarek al-Bitar as the new prosecutor after he was proposed for the post by caretaker Minister of Justice Marie-Claude Najem, NNA said.