An American official said Israel is behind the assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist, CNN reported Wednesday, Anadolu reports. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed Friday on the outskirts of Tehran. The anonymous official from President Donald Trump's administration told the network that Tel Aviv authorities have long pursued the scientist but...

The Czech Republic said on Wednesday it would add a diplomatic presence to its Jerusalem office next year in what the foreign ministry called a move to boost services for Czech citizens in Israel and not a new embassy, Reuters reports. The central European country has long been one...

Dozens of protesters gathered on Wednesday before the United Arab Emirates (UAE) embassy in the UK capital during a ceremony marking the occasion of UAE National Day. The protesters indicated that while the UAE celebrates its national day and promulgates false achievements to conceal its violations, a bulk of...

Israel edged closer on Wednesday towards a fourth national election in two years after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's main governing partner, Benny Gantz, backed an opposition move to dissolve parliament, Reuters reports. Parliament gave preliminary approval to a dissolution bill, but the legislation needs to pass three as yet...

Israel foresees $220 million in non-defence trade with Bahrain in 2021, the Economy Ministry said on Wednesday as it hosted a delegation from the Gulf state to cement newly established ties, Reuters reports. Bahrain and neighbour the United Arab Emirates normalised relations with Israel on Sept. 15, a US-brokered...

Sudan has apparently told the US that it will not normalise relations with Israel until Washington removes the African country from the list of states which "sponsor" terrorism, the New York Times has reported. The interim government in Khartoum is said to have marked the end of this year...

The US Ambassador to Yemen, Christopher Henzel, made a "surprise" visit to the eastern governorate of Al-Mahra, arriving in the provincial capital of Ghaydah on Monday. According to Al-Mahra Online, the diplomat held a series of meetings with the governor Muhammad Ali Yasser and other local officials to discuss the developments in the province, with a focus on...

Egypt's Cabinet is planning to issue a new law imposing more penalties for the marriage of underage girls and child labour, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said during a Cabinet meeting on the national strategic population plan. The new law is set to toughen the penalties and broaden the scope...

Claims and denials of an assassination attempt on the Mayor of Istanbul by Daesh have caused confusion across Turkey, with contradictory statements being issued by the media, police and politicians. The initial claim was made by Turkish media when it was reported yesterday that the terror group had attempted...

At least 11 children, including a one-month-old, were killed in Yemen in two separate attacks over the past three days, the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) said yesterday. The internationally recognised Saudi-backed government of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi blamed the Houthis for the attacks. "The killing of children...

An Israeli bus driver killed two Palestinian workers this morning in an apparent hit-and-run incident in the occupied West Bank, reported Wafa news agency. Palestinian security sources said the workers were struck by a bus, which had been empty of passengers, near a military checkpoint known as 300, located at the northern entrance...

NATO is committed to further strengthening the conflict resolution mechanism between Turkey and Greece to ease tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean, the organisation's Secretary General said on Tuesday. Jens Stoltenberg made his comments during a news conference about the NATO 2030 project, Anadolu has reported. Stoltenberg said that NATO...

Some 14 Indian nationals have been set free after being detained in Yemen's capital Sanaa since February. The Indian Embassy in Djibouti confirmed their release on Saturday and made arrangements for their return home. The Indian Embassy in Sanaa relocated to the East African country across the Gulf of...

US Presidential adviser Jared Kushner arrived in the Gulf on Monday in an effort to end the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, Al Jazeera reported. Kushner is hoping to pull off a last-minute foreign policy victory in the region just weeks before his father-in-law President Donald Trump leaves the White House. The...

Hundreds of public sector engineers in Tunisia yesterday organised a mass protest to demand a wage increase. According to an Anadolu Agency correspondent, the protesters raised banners in front of parliament reading: "Specific increase is a right not an allowance", and "Investing in engineers means investing in Tunisia." In a statement...

The roses with which the UAE welcomed the first Israeli aircraft to land in the country of Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, who was known for his historic hostility to normalisation, were repaid by Israel's humiliating investigation and inspection of its Emirati visitors. Whoever understands Netanyahu's mentality will know...

The French Foreign Ministry has reiterated its desire for the US and Iran to return to the nuclear deal and stated that attacks on Saudi Arabia by the Houthis in Yemen are against international law. According to the Saudi news site Al-Arabiya, a spokeswoman of the French Foreign Ministry said:...

Algeria's Minister of Communication and government spokesman Ammar Belhimer has denounced the French role in the European Parliament's resolution on the "Situation of freedom in Algeria", describing it as "foolish, deviant, reckless and insolent". Belhimer said that Algeria is paying the price for advocating for just causes and rejecting...

The man who killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri will be sentenced on 11 December, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported. Prosecutors are calling for Salim Jamil Ayyash, 57, to face life imprisonment when sentenced next week. Ayyash was convicted in absentia for the 2005 assassination of Hariri by the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised the media's tendency to turn a deliberate blind eye to the French government's attempt to suppress freedom of the press, Turkish media has reported. Erdogan made his comments at the inauguration ceremony of the TRT World Forum on Tuesday. The international media...

The Algerian Football Federation yesterday condemned the exposure of international player, Nabil Bentaleb, to racist attacks in Germany. This came in a statement published by the Algerian Football Federation on its official website. "While the world's highest sports bodies, led by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), are...

Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson has called on the Egyptian authorities to release three senior staff members of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). Executive Director Jasser Abdel-Razek, Administrative Director Mohamed Bashir and Director of the Criminal Justice Unit Karim Ennarah were detained in early November following a meeting with European...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to ask the Egyptian government to disclose the financial information of companies owned by the military before disbursing the new payment of the current lending programme. This came in a letter sent by the international New York based...

The Supreme Court of the State of New York reviewed last week reviewed a case filed by Fordham Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) against the university's decision to ban their club. In 2017, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Palestine Legal, and cooperating counsel Alan Levine filed a lawsuit...

Watch our interview with co-founder of the Celebrating Syria Festival Abir Tobji to discuss their upcoming event, set to kick off online on 5 December. The festival, which is the first such event dedicated to showcasing Syrian arts and culture in the UK, will feature a stand-up comedy act, a...

The World Bank warned yesterday that more than half of Lebanese people will be poor by 2021 and criticised the local authorities' "deliberate lack of effective policy action" to overcome the crisis. A report by the World Bank Lebanon Economic Monitor (LEM) said: "A year into Lebanon's severe economic...

As tension escalates on numerous fronts, Israeli intelligence agencies continue to develop their capabilities, and now have databases and integrated artificial intelligence, allowing them to analyse massive amounts of information. According to senior officers, agents are now able to identify militants heading for Israeli targets, which was almost impossible...

The Chairman of Egypt's Suez Canal Authority, Osama Rabie, yesterday announced that the canal's navigation movement was "normal despite the repercussions of the novel coronavirus". Rabie told reporters that 1,614 vessels had crossed the canal In November, with a total "net tonnage of 100,200,000 tonnes." "The regularity of navigation...

Iran yesterday officially denied Revolutionary Guard Commander Muslim Shahdan was killed at the Iraq-Syria border, local news agencies reported. Speaking to the Iranian news agency Tasnim, government spokesperson Ali Rabiei denied reports that Shahdan was killed along with his bodyguards in a drone strike on the Syria-Iraq border over the weekend. This...

The Governor of Iraq's Najaf governorate, Luay Al-Yassiry, yesterday announced the launching of a road project linking the governorate with Saudi Arabia. Al-Yasiri said in a statement that the pilgrimage land road project includes the paving of a road 239 kilometres long, in addition to establishing border outlets and...

Deputy leader of Palestine's Fatah movement, Mahmoud Al-Aloul, said a committee which includes Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian officials has been formed to coordinate the Palestinian call for holding an international peace conference. Speaking to the Voice of Palestine Radio yesterday, Al-Aloul said as a result of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' visit...

The Iranian government has rejected parliament's decision to raise the annual enrichment of uranium to 20 per cent and stop international inspections of the country's nuclear facilities. A spokesman for the Iranian government, Ali Rabiei, said parliament's decision will not contribute to lifting sanctions, adding that the decision must...

On 29 August 1969, TWA Flight 840 took off from Los Angeles for Tel Aviv via Rome. There were 116 passengers on board, including a young Palestinian woman called Laila Khaled. She and her accomplice, Salim Al-Issawi, hijacked the aircraft on the final leg of the journey, forcing it...

The Lebanese Attorney General, Judge Ghassan Oweidat, has summoned Interior Minister Mohamed Fahmi for questioning over his remarks about widespread corruption in the judicial system and among judges. The Lebanese News Agency yesterday reported that the Attorney General has also summoned the host of "Sar el Waqt" political talk show, Marcel...

The Serbian Orthodox Church paid a heavy price for its disregard for measures to prevent coronavirus, which led to the death of the head of the church, Patriarch Irinej of Serbia. Last week, Patriarch Irinej died as a result of the virus after the church continued to allow funerals...

Egypt executed at least 57 people in October and November, Amnesty International has said, almost double the number of executions carried out in the whole of 2019. Amnesty referred to it as a "horrifying execution spree", and highlighted the case of 15 political prisoners who were hanged in October. Of...

The current crisis between Qatar and the Gulf states could end "within 24 hours", Saudi Arabia's permanent representative to the United Nations, Abdullah Bin Yahya Al-Mouallimi, said yesterday. "If Qatar recedes from its previous stances, stops its support for terrorists, halts grants to extremist media, as well as stopping...

Member of Political Bureau of Islamic Jihad, Khalid Al-Batch, yesterday called on the Palestinian Authority (PA) to lift the sanctions it has imposed on the Gaza Strip and resume unity talks. During a meeting with the media and Palestinian public figures held in Gaza, Al-Batch stressed that the PA...

The conflict in Yemen has claimed 233,000 lives over the last six years, Anadolu reported the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) saying yesterday. In a report about the situation in the war-torn country, the UNOCHA said: "This large number is unfortunate and unacceptable." At the same time,...

Egypt is to "temporarily" end its investigation into the murder of Italian student Guilio Regeni, who was found dead in Cairo in 2016, Egyptian and Italian prosecutors said in a joint statement on Monday. The press release said that Egypt's prosecution had evidence that a criminal gang carried out...

Israel's Hadassah Medical Centre is currently in talks with the UAE over the sale of 1.5 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for Palestine, Quds Press reported yesterday. According to the news site, the Israeli public radio Kan, reported that the negotiations between the two sides related to the Russian vaccine. Kan noted...

Jordanian King Abdullah II affirmed the centrality of the Palestinian cause and the importance of continuing to strive towards achieving a just and comprehensive peace accepted by the peoples, based on international law and legitimacy. This came in a message that the Jordanian monarch sent to the Chairman of...

The Iraqi army on Sunday announced that it had launched a military campaign to pursue Daesh cells in the desert of Anbar governorate, which borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The commander of Anbar Operations, Major General Nasser Al-Ghanem, said in a statement that the military campaign was launched...

The US is not a charity that donates things for goodwill without expecting something in return, the head of the Sovereignty Council of Sudan, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, has said in relation to America removing Khartoum from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. In an interview with the Egyptian...

Lebanon's central bank can keep basic subsidies for only two more months and the state should come up with a plan, Governor Riad Salameh said on Tuesday as the country's financial crisis spirals. He told Saudi's al-Hadath TV the central bank would commit to providing Lebanese government accounts for...

Just hours after the assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist, Tehran demanded the United Nations Security Council condemn the killing and take action against those responsible, but diplomats say the call is likely to go unheeded. At a minimum, the 15-member body could discuss Friday's killing of nuclear...

President Emmanuel Macron will seek to revive a French initiative on Lebanon when he hosts an international aid conference on Wednesday, but with the country's fractious political class bickering, hopes of a breakthrough appear slim. Four months after a massive explosion that killed more than 200 people and destroyed...

The EU remains intent on preserving the Iran nuclear deal, the bloc's top diplomat said Tuesday, reports Anadolu Agency. Speaking at an event organized by the European External Action Service (EEAS), EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh on November 27...

Palestinian groups in Gaza urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Tuesday to reverse a decision to resume talks with Israel and instead accomplish Palestinian intra-reconciliation, reports Anadolu Agency. "The return of relations hindered the path of national reconciliation but didn't fail it completely." Khalil al-Hayya, a member...

Swedish-Iranian scientist Ahmadreza Djalali, sentenced to death in Iran on espionage charges, may face imminent execution, rights groups said on Tuesday. "On 1 December, a judge said Ahmadreza was to be transferred to Rajai Shahr prison TODAY to proceed with his imminent execution," Amnesty International said on Twitter. "His...