Jordanian journalists demonstrated on Wednesday against a "repressive" government decision to block unlicensed local news websites, as experts voiced alarm over freedom of expression.

"We gathered today to tell King Abdullah II that the government's repressive decision violates the constitution," Nasser Lafi, editor of Busala, or compass, news website, told Agence France Presse.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will fly to Britain a day before next week's G8 summit for talks with David Cameron on the conflict in Syria, the British prime minister announced Wednesday.

The two leaders will meet at Cameron's Downing Street office on Sunday, before heading to Northern Ireland for the summit of Group of Eight nations on Monday and Tuesday.

A young Jordanian man died in hospital on Wednesday after setting himself on fire outside the ministry of social development last week in despair over failing to meet the minister.

"Ahmad Robin, 23, died of severe burns that covered more than 90 percent of his body. We could not help him," Issam Shraideh, director of Amman's Bashir public hospital, told Agence France Presse.

Kuwait's Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah landed in Iraq on Wednesday for a surprise one-day visit as the two countries look to cement improving ties and resolve a swathe of long-running disputes.

Sabah was met at Baghdad airport by his Iraqi counterpart Nouri al-Maliki.

Leaders of a growing Palestinian movement to boycott Israel oppose any peace talks, even if they include a long-demanded freeze of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

"We have no faith... in the so-called negotiations," said Omar Barghouti, head of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which lobbies worldwide for the economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel.

Austrian troops in the U.N. monitoring force on the Golan Heights began withdrawing on Wednesday, days after Vienna decided to quit the mission over security concerns, an Agence France Presse photographer said.

A group of 20 soldiers entered the Israeli side of the strategic plateau through the Quneitra Crossing, the only direct passage between Israel and Syria, the photographer said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his British counterpart William Hague on Wednesday to discuss Syria as Washington struggles to organize a peace conference to end the conflict.

Plans to bring together the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad and the opposition at talks in Geneva have so far failed to come to fruition, and Hague at the weekend warned regime gains on the ground raised new hurdles.

Algeria's prime minister and army chief of staff on Tuesday visited President Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the hospital in Paris where he is convalescing after suffering a mini-stroke, state television announced.

"Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and the Chief of Staff of the people's national army Ahmed Gaid Salah paid a visit to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika at the Institution des Invalides in Paris," the broadcaster said.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appealed Tuesday for dialogue and greater efforts at "national reconciliation" in Iraq after a wave of deadly attacks.

Ban "underscores the pressing need for dialogue between political blocs in order to overcome the current crisis," his spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Supporters and opponents of Egypt's Islamist President Mohamed Morsi clashed on Tuesday outside the culture ministry, where artists have been protesting against what they see as efforts to impose a religious agenda.

Dozens of Islamist protesters and anti-government demonstrators fought outside the ministry headquarters in the Cairo neighborhood of Zamalek leaving several lightly injured, Agence France Presse reporters said.