Israel's president held talks with party leaders Wednesday on the new governing coalition to be headed by Benjamin Netanyahu after receiving the official results of the November 1 general election won by the veteran right-winger.

Such presidential consultations had been a source of intrigue after Israel's four previous elections, as it was not immediately clear which leader would get the first shot at forming a coalition, or whether they would be successful. 

A strike on a pro-Iran militia convoy in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border killed at least 14 people overnight, a war monitor said Wednesday, without specifying who carried it out.

An official of the Iraqi border guard said the trucks were transporting fuel from Iran to Lebanon overland through Iraq and Syria.

The United Arab Emirates and Egypt agreed Tuesday to develop one of the world's largest wind farms in a deal struck on the sidelines of the UN's COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. 

Long-hauled carrier Emirates is buying five Boeing 777 freighters in a deal valued at more than $1.7 billion, further expanding its cargo flight capacity, the two companies announced Tuesday.

Emirates previously announced a $1 billion investment to its cargo flights, including buying two new Boeing 777s and converting 10 Boeing 700-300ER passenger planes into freighter aircraft. The two new aircraft joined Emirates' fleet in 2022, while the conversions are scheduled to begin in 2023.

Assailants have fatally shot an American aid worker in a rare killing of a foreigner in the Iraqi capital in recent years, two police officials said.

The man was shot in his car as he entered the street where he lives in Baghdad's central Karrada district on the east bank of the Tigris River but the reason for the killing was not immediately clear, they said. They said the man's wife and child were in the car with him but were not hurt.

World leaders are making the case for tougher action to tackle global warming Tuesday, as this year's international climate talks in Egypt heard growing calls for fossil fuel companies to help pay for the damage they have helped cause to the planet.

United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned Monday that humanity was on "a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator," urging countries to "cooperate or perish."

Britain and France have raised the case of a dissident hunger striker with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, a day after the jailed activist started refusing water.

Alaa Abdel Fattah, a British-Egyptian, stopped drinking water on Sunday to coincide with the opening of the COP27 climate summit in Egypt.

Three Egyptian journalists said Monday they had begun hunger strikes to demand authorities free Alaa Abdel Fattah, a jailed political dissident who has been refusing food and now water too.

Human Rights Watch Monday accused the government in Damascus and Turkey of exacerbating Syria's deadly cholera outbreak by restricting aid and water-flow to the country's Kurdish-held northeast.

More than two dozen people were injured, including the head of Iraq's civil defense directorate, when a commercial building in the capital caught fire and then collapsed Sunday, authorities and the state news agency reported.

The official Iraqi News Agency said the civil defense director, Maj. Gen. Kadhim Bohan, and some firefighters were among those injured when the burning building collapsed.