RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: Israeli forces on Friday killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry and the army said, with the latter adding that a soldier was lightly wounded.
Mehdi Bayadsa, 29, was killed by “bullets from the occupation (Israel) near the Rantis military checkpoint, west of Ramallah,” the ministry said in a statement.
The military in a statement said it had “neutralized” a Palestinian who had arrived near the crossing point between the West Bank and Israel in a stolen vehicle.

ANKARA: As part of recently re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attempts to overhaul his economic team, the country’s central bank will be governed by a female executive for the first time.

US-based Hafize Gaye Erkan, 41, is Turkiye’s fifth central bank chief in four years, replacing Sahap Kavcioglu, who followed a policy of slashing interest rates despite rising inflation of around 40 percent. Kavcioglu has now been appointed head of the Banking Regulatory and Supervision Agency (BDDK).

HALZOUN, Syria: Huddled inside a tent in rebel-held northwestern Syria, Umm Khaled says she fears her baby will die unless she gets specialist treatment in neighboring Turkiye for a congenital heart defect.
Seriously ill Syrians in the country’s last rebel bastion of Idlib used to be able to access life-saving care across the border.
But the main crossing there for medical visits slammed shut after a deadly earthquake ravaged southern Turkiye on February 6, prompting Ankara to prioritize its domestic needs.

CAIRO: About 300 children have been evacuated from an orphanage in Sudan’s capital Khartoum where dozens of orphans were found last month to have died since mid-April due to nearby fighting between rival military factions.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which facilitated the evacuation late on Wednesday, said the children aged between 1 and 15 had been taken to a safer location in Wad Madani, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Khartoum.

TRIPOLI: The United Nations said Thursday it would work toward helping Libya’s rival factions agree on contested points preventing long-delayed presidential and legislative elections being held in the conflict-scarred nation.
Early Wednesday, envoys of Libya’s factions said after more than two weeks of talks in Morocco they had agreed on the legal steps required for new elections.
But they stopped short of signing an agreement, indicating that they had differences that still need to be resolved.