Prosecutors demanded on Wednesday that former Israeli premier Ehud Olmert do six months of community service for graft while waiving a requirement that he be barred from public office, an official said.

The prosecution made the request during deliberations for sentencing in the Jerusalem District Court, due on September 24, according to the judicial official.

The Free Syrian Army plans to reform to overcome divisions and address the growing number of militias fighting on its behalf, as well as to rename itself, a rebel general said on Wednesday.

Following discussions due to end in around 10 days, the FSA would go by the name of the Syrian National Army, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the military council grouping rebel chiefs, told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday canceled a security cabinet meeting after details from an initial session, which reportedly concerned the Iranian threat, were leaked to the press.

"A short time after the conclusion of yesterday's meeting, a very serious thing happened: a leak from within the cabinet's discussions," said a statement from his office.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi on Wednesday told a meeting of Arab League ministers it was time for the Syrian regime to step down and added that a resolution of the crisis was an Arab responsibility.

"I tell the Syrian regime 'there is still a chance to end the bloodshed'. Now is the time for change... no time to be wasted talking about reform," Morsi told the Cairo meeting.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that Syria had become a "terrorist state" carrying out massacres against its own people.

"The regime in Syria has become a terrorist state," Erdogan told his ruling AKP meeting in Ankara. "Syria is not an ordinary country to us. We do not have the luxury to remain indifferent to what's happening there."

A strike by an unmanned drone killed five suspected members of al-Qaida in eastern Yemen on Wednesday, a security official said.

"Five al-Qaida members were killed in the raid" that targeted a house in the village of Al-Ain in Hadramawt province, the official said, requesting anonymity.

Mauritanian authorities have handed over Moammar Gadhafi's ex-spy chief to Libya nearly five months after he was arrested for entering the country illegally, state television reported Wednesday.

"Mauritanian authorities hand over ex-Libyan spy chief Abdullah al-Senussi to Libya," read a newsflash on the screen written in Arabic.

Three U.S. senators voiced concerns to Iraq's prime minister that Iran has resumed using Baghdad's airspace to fly weapons and equipment to bolster Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, they said on Wednesday.

Unknown assailants shot dead a senior officer in the Jenin branch of the Palestinian security forces in the northern West Bank city, a Palestinian security official told Agence France Presse Wednesday.

"Unknown assailants opened fire on Hisham Rokh, 41, deputy head of the preventative security forces in Jenin, shortly after midnight as he was returning home in his car," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

China said Wednesday it supported a political transition in Syria and was not attached to President Bashar Assad as it defended its record during a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton, meeting in Beijing with the country's top leadership, reiterated she was "disappointed" by the vetoes of China and Russia of U.N. resolutions that would have threatened action against Assad to end the spiraling bloodshed.