A Lebanese pop star turned Islamic militant told a military court Thursday that he is innocent and did not take part in battles against the Lebanese army or fund a radical cleric, judicial officials said.

Fadel Shaker handed himself over to the country's military intelligence service in early October, 12 years after going on the run and hiding in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh near the port city of Sidon.

Lebanon's moves to remove weapons from all non-state groups and assert full state control are as important as financial reforms if the economy is to recover after years of crisis, the economy minister said Thursday.

"You need economic reforms, but you also need security and political reforms," Amer Bisat told The Associated Press after a cabinet session in which the Lebanese military reported progress on a plan to disarm Hezbollah and non-state groups and expand deployment in southern Lebanon.

Saudi Arabia alleged Thursday that the United Arab Emirates smuggled a separatist leader in Yemen wanted for treason out of the country and flew him to Abu Dhabi.

The UAE had no immediate reaction to the claim, which further escalates tensions between the neighboring nations on the Arabian Peninsula as their partnership in the yearslong war in Yemen breaks down.

President Donald Trump's administration on Wednesday sought to assert its control over Venezuelan oil, seizing a pair of sanctioned tankers transporting petroleum and announcing plans to relax some sanctions so the U.S. can oversee the sale of Venezuela's petroleum worldwide.

Trump's administration intends to control the distribution of Venezuela's oil products globally following its ouster of President Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid. Besides the United States enforcing an existing oil embargo, the Energy Department says the "only oil transported in and out of Venezuela" will be through approved channels consistent with U.S. law and national security interests.

The Senate is expected to vote on a resolution Thursday that would limit President Donald Trump's ability to conduct further attacks against Venezuela, setting up a test for his expanding ambitions in the Western Hemisphere.

The war powers resolution would require Trump to get congressional approval before striking Venezuela again, and it comes after the U.S. military seized the president of the South American country, Nicolás Maduro, in a surprise nighttime raid and as Trump's administration is seeking to control Venezuela's oil resources and its government.

Denmark has welcomed a meeting with the U.S. next week to discuss President Donald Trump's renewed call for the strategic, mineral-rich Arctic island of Greenland to come under American control.

"This is the dialogue that is needed, as requested by the government together with the Greenlandic government," Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told Danish broadcaster DR on Thursday.

Guides who take tourists to enjoy the striking views of Sicily's Mount Etna are up in arms over tougher restrictions imposed by local authorities after a round of eruptions at the giant volcano in recent weeks.

Authorities in the city of Catania have suspended or restricted excursions to see the volcano's lava flows, prompting guides to go on strike for the first time in decades and leaving disgruntled tourists with fewer options to see the spectacle up close.

More artificial intelligence is being implanted into Gmail as Google tries to turn the world's most popular email service into a personal assistant that can improve writing, summarize far-flung information buried in inboxes and deliver daily to-do lists.

The new AI features announced Thursday could herald a pivotal moment for Gmail, a service that transformed email when it was introduced nearly 22 years ago. Since then, Gmail has amassed more than 3 billion users to become nearly as ubiquitous as Google's search engine.

Israel's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that Hezbollah is "rearming faster than it is being disarmed," showing a map of alleged Hezbollah compounds, launch sites, and underground networks south of the Litani River.

Lebanon's military had said it had concluded the first phase of a plan to fully deploy across southern Lebanon and disarm non-state groups, notably Hezbollah.

Yemen is threatening to fracture even further, exposing a growing rift between Middle East powers Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The latest friction is among members of the Saudi-led coalition based in Yemen's south that for years has been fighting Iranian-backed Houthi rebels based in the north.

Here's a look at the forces involved as Saudi Arabia pursues dialogue among all the players in the south of Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation: