Labor rights in Iran are under threat as Western sanctions take their toll on the economy, sharply reducing the purchasing power of workers, the International Federation for Human Rights warned on Monday.

"Unemployment is on the rise, inflation is at unprecedented levels and most people have to combine several jobs because the minimum wage is insufficient to counterbalance inflation," the group said.

A Kuwaiti court jailed a woman for 11 years on Monday for posting remarks on Twitter deemed insulting to the emir and calling for the overthrow of the regime, said the verdict.

With the ruling, Huda al-Ajmi will become the first woman to go to jail in Kuwait over the use of Twitter after receiving the longest sentence for online dissent in the Gulf state.

Saudi Arabia has decided to give Syria's opposition National Coalition the right to process applications of Syrians wishing to perform the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in autumn, an official said on Monday.

The kingdom handled last year's hajj visa applications without cooperating with Damascus.

Syrian rebels made fresh advances on Monday in their battle to seize the Minnigh airbase in northern Syria, a monitoring group said.

"Opposition fighters have seized the radar tower in the Minnigh airbase," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told Agence France Presse.

A conservative hopeful for Iran's presidential elections pulled out of the race on Monday, but did not endorse any of the four other conservatives standing in the vote, media reports said.

Ex-parliamentary speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, seen close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was not considered a frontrunner for the June 14 election.

Toppled president Hosni Mubarak's retrial was adjourned until July on Monday after new documents and videos were submitted over his alleged complicity in the killings of protesters during Egypt's 2001 revolution.

The criminal court in Cairo, on a technicality, also ordered the release of his two sons, Alaa and Gamal Mubarak, who have been on trial along with the former leader on corruption charges.

Yemeni forces have arrested six al-Qaida militants, including a local chief, in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, where the army is pressing an offensive against the group, the defence ministry said on Monday.

Security forces captured Omar Ashour, the al-Qaida chief in Ghayl Bawazir, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) east of the port city of Mukalla, along with his son Abdullah in the nearby village of Shaheer, the ministry said on its news website 26sep.net.

A controversial U.N. rights expert called Monday for an international investigation of Israel's treatment of Palestinian prisoners, decrying arbitrary detention, torture and coerced confessions among other alleged abuses.

"The treatment of thousands of Palestinians detained or imprisoned by Israel continues to be extremely worrisome," said Richard Falk, the U.N.'s outspoken expert on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who was to return to the region this week for talks with Israelis and Palestinians, has postponed his visit, Israeli media reported on Monday.

According to Israel HaYom, a newspaper considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Kerry had been due to arrive on Tuesday, but put off the visit "to give (Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas) more time" to decide whether to drop his insistence on a settlement freeze before returning to negotiations.

Iran's Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant has suffered a malfunction in its main generator, the Islamic Republic's ambassador to Moscow said on Monday.

Mahmoud Reza Sadjadi did not specify the nature of the malfunction or make clear whether it has caused the plant's shutdown, Russia's state Itar-TASS news agency reported.