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The German parliament’s lower house approved on Friday a contentious law to limit asylum applications from Georgia and three Maghreb countries Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, Reuters reports. Some 509 German lawmakers, mostly from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative-left coalition government, voted in favor of the legislation, which declared Georgia, Algeria,...

In a statement, the ministry said the protesters — whose names were not given — had been injured by live ammunition, Anadolu Agency reports. According to the ministry, two journalists and three paramedics were also injured when they were struck by teargas shells. Since Palestinians began holding almost-daily rallies...

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Friday the Human Rights Council has the capacity to probe the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Anadolu Agency reports. “The Human Rights Council has the possibility to take decisions in relation to launching different forms of interaction,” Guterres said at a press conference...

In a low-lit gallery in central London, Suhad Jarrar-Browne sat on a red embroidered cushion surrounded by a rich array of Palestinian artefacts. Brass coffee pots were lined neatly in a row on a table nearby. Intricately-embroidered dresses hung from the wall behind her, carefully woven with elaborate designs...

Four baby lion cubs died from the cold in a Gaza zoo after wind ripped protective plastic sheeting from their cage during a winter storm, the zoo’s owner said on Friday, Reuters reports. Two cubs were found dead on Thursday, just a day after they were born, said Fathy...

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Ethnic minority Britons face “shocking” discrimination in the labour market, with those originating from Muslim-majority countries facing the greatest obstacles, new UK research has revealed today. According to a study by the Centre for Social Investigation at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Britons originating from the Middle East and...

Two journalists have been wounded in Gaza as they covered weekly Friday protests taking place as part of the Great March of Return. Mohammed Abu Qadous was injured in the leg are a tear gas canister was fired at him by Israeli soldiers on the Gaza border. Al-Mayadeen correspondent...

Israeli electoral candidate Benny Gantz has officially launched his election campaign, breaking weeks of silence and mystery around his politics. Gantz – who heads the Israel Resilience Party (Hosen L’Yisrael) – has kept his political stance shrouded in mystery since he first announced the formation of his party in...

Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked is facing calls to resign as Israeli politicians accuse her of complicity in a sex scandal that has rocked the country’s judiciary. Shaked yesterday hit back at accusations that she bore responsibility for the scandal, in which the head of the Israel Bar Association,...

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Did you like this photo gallery? Then you’ll love this video: Yemen qualifies for Asian Cup for the first time  ...

Turkey has deported a journalist back to the Netherlands as a “precautionary measure” after receiving a tip-off from Dutch authorities that she was linked to designated terror groups in Syria. Johanna Cornelia Boersma, who worked as a freelance reporter for Dutch paper Het Financieele Dagblad, flew back to Dutch...

A Cairo criminal court adjourned the trial of ousted President Mohamed Morsi in a case in which he is accused of “espionage for Hamas”. Morsi, along with 23 other defendants, is in court accused of orchestrating prison breaks and breaches of Egypt’s eastern border during the country’s 2011 uprising....

Security authorities have extended the detention of an Egyptian mother jailed for spreading fake news, less than two days after approving her release from prison. Yesterday, Mona Mahmud Mohammad – also known as Umm Zubeida – was ordered to remain in jail for a further 45 days after prosecutors...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday that 24.4 million Yemenis are in need of humanitarian assistance, 80 per cent of the country’s 28-million-strong population. Writing on Twitter, the WHO said that “while Yemen is facing the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, the situation is getting worse year...

The General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions (PGFTU) warned yesterday that the poverty rate in the Gaza Strip has exceeded 80 per cent. The federation warned that both poverty and unemployment rates have reached unprecedented levels in the Gaza Strip, with poverty exceeding 80 per cent. Meanwhile, unemployment rates...

The Bahrain Centre for Dialogue and Tolerance says it has documented the arrest of more than 5,000 prisoners of conscience, as well as 200 victims of excessive use of force, murder and torture. The head of the centre, Sheikh Maytham Al-Salman, said in a statement during a conference held...

Chair of the UN Security Council’s Sudan Sanctions Committee, Joanna Wronecka, yesterday accused Sudan and armed groups in the Darfur region of violating the arms embargo imposed on the country. The committee’s coordinator, Thomas Bifwoli Wanjala, said in a report – which covered the period March-November 2018 – that...

The Iraqi government has not fulfilled its promises of providing aid to displaced persons returning voluntarily, compensating them and rehabilitating their homes, a spokesman for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said yesterday. No attention has been paid to the humanitarian appeals by the...

Israel’s Security Minister Gilad Erdan has called for international observers to be expelled from Hebron. Erdan yesterday sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanding that he end the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH), in the south of the occupied West Bank. According...

The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture has imposed a ban on the import of onions from Egypt. According to the Director-General of the Livestock Risk Assessment Department at the ministry, Sanad Al-Harbi, the ban follows an analysis of onion shipments from Egypt which contained unacceptable levels...

Khaled Hamdy was arrested on the 27 March 2014 from his home in Egypt. He had been working as a production manager for Egypt 25, a TV channel founded by the Muslim Brotherhood to provide live coverage of the 2011 Arab Spring. Hamdy was accused of spying for Qatar,...

The White House “blocked an emergency effort” to finish major US-funded school, water and sewage projects in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, reported NPR. One such project is “a nearly complete multimillion-dollar sewage network in Jericho” which will now “have to be buried under asphalt and abandoned”,...

The Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, said Thursday that the Trump administration is acting in support of the ‘Greater Israel’ project and against Palestinian statehood. Zomlot was speaking at a talk hosted by the LSE’s Middle East Centre. The ambassador, previously posted to the United States before...

Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s lawyer “to discuss Netanyahu’s request that Mendelblit not make any decisions in the cases against him prior to April’s election”, reported Haaretz. Responding to attorney Navot Tel-Zur’s letter, Mendelblit’s aide, Gil Limon, “wrote that work on the...

Officials of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have announced that they have held a series of meetings with a delegation of senior Russian army officers to discuss ways to improve relations between their troops and prevent friction. The IDF released the news via Twitter on Thursday, reported Anadolu. Although...

Do its member states take the UN Charter seriously any more? The United Nations was originally set up “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”. However, since those heady days when international law...

The US-led coalition hit a mosque Thursday believed to be a military command post for Daesh in northern Syria, Anadolu reports. The strike “destroyed an ISIS (Daesh) command and control facility in a mosque” in Safafiyah town in Deir ez-Zor province, the coalition said in a statement, using another name for Daesh. The terror organization “continues to...

Sudan’s council of ministers yesterday issued a decree to increase wages for the public sector workers, state-owned Sudan News Agency (SUNA) has reported, quoting official sources. The increment, the sources explained, would comprise a minimum monthly income of 500 Sudanese pounds ($10.5), up to 2,500 Sudanese pounds ($52.6). The...

The death toll from clashes between rival militias in the Libyan capital Tripoli has risen to 10 killed and 41 wounded, the health ministry said on Thursday, Reuters reports. Fighting broke out this week between rival armed groups in the south of the capital, breaching a shaky ceasefire brokered by...

Yemen’s warring parties hope to deliver final lists of prisoners to the United Nations after talks in Amman on Thursday under an exchange agreement, a government delegate said, Reuters reports. The United Nations is pushing for the swap and a peace deal in the main port city of Hodeidah to...

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been able to make up the deficit in its budget following the US move to stop making its usual donations to the agency. According to informed Lebanese sources, many countries, including the Gulf States,...

The US Air Force has been training Saudi-led coalition personnel from the United Arab Emirates for aerial combat in Yemen, Yahoo News reported late Wednesday, citing newly obtained official documents, Anadolu reports. A spokesman and an official from US Central Command told Yahoo News the military did not “conduct exercises with...

The US government believes the Daesh militant group is likely responsible for Wednesday’s attack in northern Syria that killed four Americans, although it has not reached a firm conclusion, two US government sources said on Thursday, Reuters reports. The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Pentagon and other...

Israel condemned on Thursday Malaysia’s ban on Israeli participation in international sporting events it hosts and said the decision was inspired by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s “rabid anti-Semitism”, says Reuters. Malaysia, a majority-Muslim country that does not maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, announced it would bar Israelis from any...

A doctor and a child were killed on Thursday as protests continued to rock the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and cities across the troubled country, reports Reuters. Police had earlier fired tear gas at protesters marching towards the presidential palace, witnesses said, during a demonstration in the capital to demand the...

Sudan’s central bank on Thursday announced plans to introduce several new categories of banknotes in February in hopes of easing an ongoing liquidity crisis. In a statement, bank head Mohamed Khair al-Zubayr said that new 100-Sudanese-pound banknotes (roughly equivalent to $2.10) would be made available early next month. READ: Sudan...

The Austrian government is seemingly determined to make it easier to expel Syrian asylum-seekers, reports Anadolu Agency. Interior Minister Herbert Kickl said Thursday that he believes a readmission agreement with the Syrian regime will be very effective. Speaking to Kronen daily, Kickl claimed an increase in the crime rate...

Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah became a three times Dakar Rally winner on Thursday, finishing with a 46-minute advantage after taking no risks on the final stage to Lima, while Australian Toby Price took the motorcycle crown. The triumph, in a gruelling endurance event now run entirely in Peru and featuring...

The head of a UN mission tasked with overseeing a peace deal in Yemen’s Hudaydah port city is safe after an armoured car in his convoy was hit by a bullet, the United Nations said on Thursday. Both the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement which controls Hudaydah and the Saudi-led coalition...

President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday the death of four Americans in Syria this week showed that the battle against Islamic State militants would continue and he vowed that France would keep its troops in the region this year. “The announced withdrawal of our American ally should not deflect...

Hungary’s largest Jewish organisation on Thursday asked Israeli and Hungarian authorities to suspend a search for the remains of Holocaust victims in the Danube riverbed, saying the dead should be left in peace. At the request of Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, an Israeli team this week began mapping out...

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Rail, bus and air traffic stopped in Tunisia today as the powerful Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) staged a one-day nationwide strike to protest against the government’s refusal to raise the salaries of 670,000 public servants. The country has struggled to freeze public sector wages as part of reforms to...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to measure its purported success by international standards. After assuming the presidency of the Group of 77 (G77), new plans are underway to launch a bid for Palestine to become a full UN member, according to PA Foreign Minister Riad Al-Maliki. It is already...

On 19 December, the Sudanese government decided to triple the price of bread, prompting a wave of anti-government protests which swiftly escalated into demonstrations calling an end to the three-decade rule of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir. The demonstrations were chaotic, as the demonstrators torched several buildings of Al-Bashir’s ruling...