Major differences remain between the United States and Cuba as they move to restore ties, especially on human rights, a top U.S. official said Wednesday on the eve of new talks.

"Significant differences remain between our two governments," top U.S. diplomat for Latin America Roberta Jacobson told U.S. lawmakers.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter saw his Mideast peace-making mission crumble on Wednesday after the Palestinians vowed to press efforts to have Israel suspended at the upcoming world football congress.

After months of rising tensions over plans by the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) to have its Israeli counterpart expelled from FIFA, Blatter himself flew into the region on Tuesday on a mission to resolve the dispute.

Spain's Alberto Contador retained the lead of the Giro d'Italia after Wednesday's 11th stage won by the Katusha team's Russian rider Ilnur Zakarin.

Zakarin biked in to victory alone after the 153km ride from Forli to Imola.

A journalist and rights activist known for his outspoken criticism of the humanitarian crisis in southeastern Niger has been arrested for "collaborating" with Boko Haram Islamists, the interior minister said Wednesday.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International condemned Moussa Tchangari's arrest and called on Niger to release him.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel still plans to meet Egypt's president when he visits next month, her spokesman said Wednesday, after Germany's parliament speaker called off his talks citing rights violations.

The parliament speaker, Norbert Lammert, said on Tuesday that he had written to the Egyptian ambassador in Berlin canceling his meeting with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi due to human rights abuses.

Iran said on Wednesday its aid ship bound for war-torn Yemen is to dock in Djibouti for inspection, heading off a potential confrontation with the United States.

The aid "will be inspected in Djibouti. The ship will dock in Djibouti and the protocol laid down by the United Nations will be implemented," Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said, quoted by the ISNA news agency.

The Afghan Taliban said Wednesday that a delegation from its Qatar-based political office had visited Iran for talks, as Kabul has made repeated overtures to the insurgent group to reopen peace negotiations.

In a statement announcing the visit, the Taliban's spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid presented the talks as if they were a meeting between two governments, rather than that of a militant group and a neighbor.

When he was killed by U.S. Navy commandos, Al-Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden was plotting a coordinated media push to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

According to documents seized in the May 2011 raid that ended the militant leader's decade on the run, he was planning a video address and jihadist propaganda blitz.

Azerbaijan on Wednesday summoned the French ambassador to protest a visit by the leader of the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region, the Caucasus republic's foreign ministry said.

"France's ambassador to Baku, Pascal Monnier, has been summoned to Azerbaijan's foreign ministry and handed a note of protest over the separatist leader's visit to France on May 17-19," Azerbaijan's foreign ministry spokesman, Hikmet Hajiyev, told AFP.

South African President Jacob Zuma apologized to Mozambicans Wednesday for a recent outbreak of xenophobic violence in which at least seven people died and hundreds of migrants were forced to flee their homes.

Speaking at the start of a two-day state visit to Maputo, Zuma said the attacks -- which included the murder of a Mozambican man captured by a press photographer -- "shocked us and disturbed us".