An aide to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has apologized after she failed to inform politicians holding talks with the president that they were live on air, allowing viewers to watch them cook up plans to sabotage a dam in Ethiopia.

"Due to the importance of the topic it was decided at the last minute to air the meeting live. I forgot to inform the participants about the changes," presidential aide for political affairs Pakinam El-Sharkawi said.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Tuesday criticized a Jordanian government decision to block 290 unlicensed local news websites, saying the move restricts media freedom.

"Jordanian authorities should immediately rescind an order to censor... unlicensed local news websites," HRW said in a statement.

The bodies of 147 men pulled out of a river in Aleppo between January and March were "probably" executed in government-controlled areas of Syria's main northern city, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.

HRW said it had visited the war-torn city and interviewed the residents and activists who found the bodies, a forensics expert and 18 of the bereaved families.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday that the country's next president should avoid making "concessions" to the west, saying this would not diffuse tensions over Tehran's nuclear drive.

Khamenei is the ultimate decision maker in Iran and has the final say on all key issues, including its controversial nuclear program, a major source of concern in the West over suspicions the Islamic republic is using it to develop weapons.

NATO is sending a team to Libya to look at the possibility of training its military, alliance head Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Tuesday, some two years after NATO helped rebels oust Moammar Gadhafi.

The team will be sent as soon as possible and return by the end of June when the next step will be determined, Rasmussen said.

Crimes against humanity are happening daily in Syria, a team of U.N. investigators said Tuesday, adding the both sides have committed massacres, engaged in torture and may have used chemical weapons.

"War crimes and crimes against humanity have become a daily reality in Syria," the Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a report delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, adding it had "reasonable grounds to believe that chemical agents have been used as weapons."

Saudi Arabia beheaded by sword one of its citizens on Tuesday after a court convicted him of murder, the interior ministry said.

Shuwail al-Amri was found guilty of killing Mohammed al-Amri, an apparent relative, by deliberately running him over with a car after a dispute, the ministry said in a statement published by SPA state news agency.

Iran's former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati would "cooperate" with France to resolve the conflict in Syria should he win the June 14 presidential election, he said in an exclusive interview with Agence France Presse.

"My offer, if I am victorious, is that Iran and France sit together to talk, and work together, to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis," Velayati said. "I am ready to do it."

The European Union and Russia launched a full day of talks on Tuesday dominated by a far-ranging dispute over the Syria crisis and Brussels' decision to lift its arms embargo on President Bashar Assad's foes.

EU dignitaries said Russia's human rights record would also come under the microscope at meetings in the industrial Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday issued a stark warning to Israel to resume long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians, saying if efforts fail now they may never get another chance.

"We are running out of time. We're running out of possibilities... If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance," Kerry told a forum in Washington organized by the American Jewish Community lobbying group.