"If the visits of the American officials to the countries of the region are to strengthen the position of the Zionist regime and to normalise the relations of this regime with some countries, their efforts will not create security for the Zionists in any way," President Ebrahim Raisi said in a statement, referring to Israel.

US presidential visits, even with the closest of allies, are often highly choreographed affairs involving weeks of planning around seating arrangements, camera positions and how officials plan to walk into rooms to set up or avoid a handshake.

Helicopters hovered overhead while security officers organised the flow of worshippers in Jamarat, where the stoning ritual takes place, as Saudi authorities closely watched the crowds to ensure an incident-free haj, which has been marred in the past by deadly stampedes.

Dashing hopes for a result that would be accepted by all sides, the United States said it could not make a "definitive conclusion" on the origin of the bullet that killed the journalist on May 11. 

Banners welcoming the faithful, including the first international visitors since 2019, festooned squares and alleys, while armed security forces patrolled the ancient city, birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad.

Army spokesman Ran Kochav's comment on army radio came after the PA gave the green light for the Americans, but not the Israelis, to examine the bullet that killed Abu Akleh during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank. 

Fresh from his "peace mission" to Kyiv and Moscow, Jokowi and his entourage have landed in Abu Dhabi to sign a raft of bilateral deals, including the Indonesia-UAE CEPA and protocols for defense cooperation.

"We are doing everything to normalise the situation (in Afghanistan) and we are trying to build relations with the political forces that control the situation," Putin said during talks with Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon.

Barring an 11th hour shock agreement to save the coalition or form a new government within the existing parliament, Bennett's eight-party alliance is due to end by midnight, installing Foreign Minister Yair Lapid as prime minister.

Members of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's outgoing coalition and the opposition led by ex-premier Benjamin Netanyahu have been sparring in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, since last week over a dissolution bill. 

All eyes are on Saudi Arabia, which Biden will visit in mid-July after he once vowed to treat the kingdom as a "pariah" state over the 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The government has said it wants to fast-track the bill but the opposition led by ex-premier Benjamin Netanyahu will attempt to block its passage in a bid to form a replacement government without the need for what would be Israel's fifth election in less than four years.

The 5.9 magnitude quake struck hardest in the rugged terrain of the east, where people already live hardscrabble lives in a country in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover in August.

The two-day China-Horn of Africa Conference on Security, Governance and Development in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, the first of its kind, ended Tuesday.

In a telephone call to Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who will become caretaker prime minister in an unwieldy coalition arrangement, Blinken confirmed that President Joe Biden still plans to visit Israel next month.

In April, Erdogan went to Saudi Arabia after a months-long drive to mend relations between the regional powers, including dropping the trial over Khashoggi's 2018 murder in Istanbul.

Bennett and Lapid forged an ideologically disparate alliance one year ago, counting eight-parties broadly united on the desire to end the tenure of former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. 

"We can expect the president to see the crown prince" during his July visit to Saudi Arabia, the official said Tuesday, quoted by AFP.

Biden's trip, which is expected to take place around mid-July, could include a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, the source said.

The decaying 45-year-old oil tanker known as the FSO Safer, long used as a floating storage platform and now abandoned off the rebel-held Yemeni port of Hodeida, has not been serviced since Yemen was plunged into civil war.

The ruling opened the way for one of the largest displacements since Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Middle East war. But residents are refusing to leave, hoping their resilience and international pressure will keep Israel from carrying out the evictions.

Sources have said Biden was planning a trip to Saudi Arabia, along with a trip to Europe and Israel in late June. The White House has said the president feels that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman is a "pariah" for his role in the killing of a political opponent, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, in Turkey in 2018.

Biden confirmed last week he was considering a trip to the conservative kingdom -- a stark reversal after he called for it to be made a pariah state during his successful campaign for the presidency.

Indonesia and Saudi Arabia have committed to boosting economic, trade and people-to-people ties as travel between the two countries resumes just in time for the haj pilgrimage season.

Officials said that while Biden's trip to Saudi Arabia was not yet confirmed, the expected visit will serve US national interests, regardless of 36-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in the 2018 murder of Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post.

Monkeypox, a usually mild viral infection, is endemic in the African countries of Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria.

Fars news said investigations into the cause of the accident were under way.

French President Emmanuel Macron, on the maiden foreign trip of his second term, was the first of a number of Western leaders to meet "MBZ", the oil-rich Gulf state's long-time de facto ruler who was appointed on Saturday, a day after the death of his ailing half-brother Sheikh Khalifa.

The State Department designated Kahane Chai as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, three years after its supporter Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

Sheikh Mohammed, now ruler of wealthy Abu Dhabi emirate, steered the Western-allied Gulf state, an OPEC oil producer and regional business hub, for years before being elected the UAE's third president by a federal supreme council on Saturday.