The two most prominent political parties in Israel today continued marathon negotiations to reach an agreement to form a coalition government before the Jewish Passover holiday, which lasts for a week, starting from Wednesday evening. “Everybody feels anxious to reach an agreement as soon as possible, preferably before the...

One of the latest survivors of the novel coronavirus in Turkey is a 95-year-old man, who was released from the hospital with applauds in western Izmir city on Monday. Ismail Kirdar, who was staying at a nursing home, was taken to the hospital due to high fever on March 25....

A university in eastern Turkey has begun using blood plasma for the passive immunisation of novel coronavirus patients. “Treatment started yesterday by collecting plasma from a patient who has recovered from the novel coronavirus and subsequently tested negative,” said Ahmet Kizilay the rector of Inonu University in Malataya province. Pointing...

Lebanon will audit its central bank’s accounts in a bid to show transparency after launching debt restructuring talks with creditors, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said on Monday. A crippling financial crisis that has gripped Lebanon for months saw it default on its hefty foreign-currency debt for the first time...

Rockets landed near a district in Iraq that houses workers for foreign oil companies on Monday, including US oil service company Halliburton, but caused no damage or casualties, oil and police sources said. Police said three Katyusha rockets were launched around 3 am local time and hit the Burjesia...

More than 20,000 Pakistani workers stuck in the United Arab Emirates are seeking to return home, as the Gulf Arab state tightens restrictions due to the coronavirus outbreak. As the virus has spread, the UAE has gradually increased curbs, including imposing a nationwide curfew, suspending passenger flights and putting...

Oil prices fell today after Saudi Arabia and Russia postponed a meeting to discuss production cuts that might help reduce oversupply in global markets. This comes at a time of declining demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier, Brent crude fell to nearly $30 a barrel, but it reduced its...

It is “highly probable” the government of Syria or its allies carried out attacks on three healthcare facilities, a school, and a refuge for children in northwest Syria last year, according to a summary of an internal United Nations inquiry seen by Reuters on Monday. The inquiry also found...

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has approved the withdrawal of one billion euros from the country’s sovereign wealth fund to help fight the coronavirus epidemic, President Hassan Rouhani’s official website said on Monday. Iran is the Middle Eastern country worst-affected so far by the coronavirus, with 3,739 deaths...

US President Donald Trump yesterday said he would be willing to impose a tax on foreign oil should Saudi Arabia and Russia fail to reach a settlement in their dispute in cutting oil production which has contributed to the global collapse in energy prices. Referring to the two countries, Trump...

Norway has called for more aid to support the struggling economy of the occupied Palestinian territories in the face of the coronavirus crisis, Haaretz has reported. The Palestinian Authority estimates that it needs $120 million to respond to the pandemic, but Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide expects the...

Israeli settlers have been accused of trying to spread the coronavirus in Palestinian neighbourhoods by spitting on cars in a West Bank village. Residents of the village of Beit Iksa, northwest of occupied Jerusalem, reported the shocking incident last week of Israeli settlers spitting on vehicles travelling into and...

The Israel Defence Forces on Saturday ordered soldiers at its largest base not to leave their rooms amid reports of a coronavirus outbreak there, Israel’s Kan news channel has reported. Soldiers at Camp Sharon in the Negev Desert have been told to stay there until further notice. Although it...

Michael Gove is facing a backlash after he praised the Jewish contribution to the fight against coronavirus, but failed to acknowledge the efforts of Muslims and other religions to combat the disease. In an address during a virtual Shabbaton at 5:30pm on Friday, Gove addressed members of 50 Jewish congregations...

The UAE has waived rental and maintenance fees worth millions of dollars for the use of its giant London Excel centre which has been converted into a 4,000-bed emergency hospital amidst the coronavirus outbreak. As much as $3.68 million a month was initially demanded for the use of the...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is banning the import of all types of Israeli products in its effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The new move, decided yesterday, comes after the Jerusalem Governor Adnan Ghaith warned Arab residents of Jerusalem not to risk purchasing goods or used items from Israelis on the...

A member of the Hezbollah Parliamentary bloc, Hassan Fadlallah, has slammed the American interference in the appointment of a governor for the Central Bank of Lebanon. Fadlallah said the US ambassador in Beirut has visited a number of officials and notified them of Washington’s candidate to replace the current...

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian and Syrian refugees living in overcrowded, underserved refugee camps in Lebanon are facing the spread of the coronavirus. According to the Lebanese authorities, so far only one Palestinian who does not live in a refugee camp has tested positive for the virus as well...

A leading member of the Houthi movement yesterday announced that he expects the liberation of Marib province to be achieved soon. Mohammed Al-Bukhaiti is the Deputy Speaker of the Shura Council and member of the AnsarAllah Political Bureau and stated on his Facebook page that “the liberation of Marib...

Iran reported 136 more deaths from the novel coronavirus today, pushing the death toll to 3,739, a health official said. Kianoush Jahanpour, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that 2,274 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total infections to 60,500, Iran’s state...

The Palestine Liberation Organisation has warned that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem have become epicentres of the coronavirus pandemic, threatening nearby Palestinian cities, towns and villages. The PLO’s National Office for the Defence of Land and Resistance of Settlement added in its weekly report that...

Egypt’s health minister arrived in Italy on Saturday to deliver medical aid amid the coronavirus global pandemic. Italy has recorded 128,948 infections so far with 15,887 deaths making it Europe’s worst-hit country. Critics have spoken out against the move, the second in the course of several weeks, given Egypt’s...

Lebanon: COVID-19 laws put refugees at risk, says HRW ...

Former Libyan Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril died in the Egyptian capital Cairo from COVID-19 at the age of 68, a Libyan source said. “Jibril actually died on Saturday late night, days after his infection with the novel coronavirus,” the source told Xinhua news agency yesterday. The late Libyan official, whose death...

The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) has announced that the UAE has made an official request to postpone the Expo 2020 Dubai scheduled to take place in October due to the coronavirus outbreak. A twelve-month postponement has been requested. The Paris-based intergovernmental organisation said that the UAE government has...

At least six female inmates have died and a further 15  have been injured in the Yemeni city of Taiz after the Houthis shelled a prison, Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni reported yesterday. “The Houthi rebels launched indiscriminate mortar shelling over the western swathes of the city this evening,” Rashad Al Akhali, deputy governor of Taiz province, told the...

At least 17 medics at Egypt’s National Cancer Institute have tested positive for coronavirus as the country’s official confirmed cases surpasses 1,000. The institute has now been closed for three days so that it can be sterilised, but doctors are criticising the management for not closing down earlier. Pharmacist...

A former presidential candidate in Egypt has called on President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi to release detainees and prisoners of conscience and form a committee of experts to implement measures to protect citizens and the economy during the coronavirus crisis. “This is a call from the heart and mind of...

The Kuwaiti Ministry of Oil announced yesterday that it had exported the first shipment of Al-Khafji oil from joint operations in the neutral zone between it and Saudi Arabia. The ministry stated on Twitter that the shipment was loaded on Saturday and Sunday “via the Kuwaiti carrier, Dar Salwa.”...

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt said yesterday that there is no room for political and intellectual differences while confronting the coronavirus, revealing the formation of a committee to deal with the effects of the virus. Speaking during a video conference Dr Al-Mitwali Zakaria, a professor of infectious diseases, said:...

Avigdor Lieberman has accused the Israeli government, especially the Ministry of Health, of dealing with the coronavirus crisis by only taking “political considerations” into account. The head of Yisrael Beiteinu insisted that the figure published by the ministry about the number of infected people is wrong and should be...

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and his presidential staff have donated a month’s salary to efforts to reduce the effects of the coronavirus crisis on citizens. According to the Algerian official news agency, salaries will be donated to help the national effort to tackle the health crisis. The country’s prime...

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) yesterday issued an exemption for holders of expired residency visas, saying they will not be fined. The decision was announced during a remote cabinet meeting, during which Abu Dhabi approved a number of directives as part of government efforts to alleviate the spread of...

At a time when all countries of the world announced the coronavirus and took the necessary precautions to confront it, and the World Health Organisation declared the coronavirus a global pandemic, Egypt continued to deny the virus’ spread in the country and covered up the deaths resulting from it. Instead,...

African Union (AU) leaders must work together “in an integrated manner in preparation for an imminent storm of novel coronavirus infections on the continent,” the World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general said yesterday. “African leaders should speed up and access necessary medical supplies and goods,” Tedros Adhanom added during a...

The Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs and Ex-Prisoners in Gaza reported yesterday that there are 200 Palestinian children held by Israel in prison who do not receive sufficient healthcare provision. They even lack the necessary protection to help curb the spread of the coronavirus Covid-19 at a time when many...

Increasing oil production will not serve the interests of any country, Russia warned yesterday, stressing that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking “constructive negotiations aimed at stabilising the global energy market.” “Russia did not back the termination of OPEC+ deal – The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries,” Russia Today...

The Sudanese army yesterday denied reports that it was carrying out a coup coinciding with the first anniversary of the sit-in on 6 April last year. The London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper quoted senior Sudanese sources as saying that there were moves by loyalists of ousted President Omar Al-Bashir’s regime to organise a military...

Turkey said on Sunday it would minimise its troop movements in operation zones in neighbouring Syria in response to the coronavirus outbreak as the Turkish death toll and infections in the country rose, Reuters reports. Turkey’s death toll from the COVID-19 disease has risen by 73 to 574 in...

Iran’s president said on Sunday “low-risk” economic activities would resume from April 11 in the Middle Eastern country worst-affected by the new coronavirus. Iran has been struggling to curb the spread of the highly infectious respiratory disease known as COVID-19 but authorities are also concerned that measures to limit...

Call it a ‘quarantine’, a ‘shelter-in-place’, a ‘lockdown’ or a ‘curfew’, we Palestinians have experienced them all, though not at all voluntarily. Personally, the first 23 years of my life were lived in virtual ‘lockdown’. My father’s ‘quarantine’ was experienced much earlier, as did his father’s ‘shelter-in-place’ before him....

Israeli police on Sunday detained Jerusalem Governor Adnan Ghaith, reports Anadolu Agency and local media outlets. A video released by the Jerusalem-based Wadi Hilweh Information Center showed police forcefully detaining Ghaith from his home in Jerusalem’s neighborhood of Silwan. Ghaith has been detained several times in recent months. The reason...

A prominent Hezbollah commander, Muhammad Ali Yunis, was killed by unknown gunmen on Sunday morning in southern Lebanon, Iranian and Lebanese media reported. The Iranian semi-official Fars news agency reported that the slain commander was “responsible for tracking spies and collaborators”. It also said that so far there is...

Iran reported 151 more deaths from coronavirus on Sunday, pushing the death toll to 3,603, a health official said. Kianoush Jahanpour, a spokesman for the Health Ministry, said that 2,483 more people tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total infections to 58,226, according to Iran’s state...

The coronavirus outbreak has now killed 46 people in Israel, with 8,018 cases registered so far, Anadolu Agency reported health officials as saying on Sunday. The Health Ministry said 203 more people tested positive for the virus, noting that out of the total, 127 are in critical condition. In...

Several flights carrying Lebanese stranded abroad by coronavirus lockdowns began arriving in Beirut on Sunday, part of a trial run to see whether thousands looking to come home can be safely repatriated without worsening the country’s outbreak. Their return became a charged issue after powerful parliament speaker Nabih Berri...

Warring factions in Yemen accused each other on Sunday of attacking an oil pipeline pumping station in the central province of Marib, where clashes have raged for weeks and displaced tens of thousands of civilians, reports Reuters. The oil ministry of the Saudi-backed government in Yemen said on Sunday...

Greece has quarantined a second migrant facility on its mainland after a 53-year-old man tested positive for the new coronavirus, the migration ministry said on Sunday, as reported by Reuters. The Afghan man lives with his family at the Malakasa camp along with hundreds of asylum seekers. He has...

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has pardoned 5,654 prisoners and ordered measures to protect inmates from the coronavirus outbreak, the justice ministry said on Sunday. The inmates were selected on the basis of their age, frail health, time spent in prison and good conduct, the ministry said in a statement....

OPEC and Russia have postponed a Monday meeting to discuss oil output cuts until April 9, OPEC sources said on Saturday, as a dispute between Moscow and Saudi Arabia over who is to blame for plunging crude prices intensified, reports Reuters. The delay came amid pressure from US President...