Tunisia is currently witnessing a prolonged political stalemate amid increasing tension and fear for the country's future and democratic ideals in the Arab world. The core of the political impasse faced by the country lies in a conflict between the three presidencies in Carthage, Kasbah and Bardo (the presidency...

The Israeli former Defence Minister and Head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party Avigdor Lieberman has called on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee to convene and review the security services' readiness for possible escalation with Syria or Iran. Lieberman made the remarks on Thursday, hours after an anti-aircraft...

Observers claim that the statements and stances of Tunisian President Kais Saied have recently raised concerns over potential deviations that could threaten the country, stating that he appears to be leading a "soft coup" against the ruling regime in order to expand his powers. According to observers, Saied is...

The National Oil Corporation in Libya (NOC) announced on Thursday that the country's crude oil production would decrease to one million barrels per day, compared to 1.3 million a few days ago, due to the accumulation of debts of companies operating in the sector. Chairman of the National Oil...

Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on Thursday hailed the Egyptian army's "brilliance" during its war with Israel in 1973. The Egyptian president was commemorating the Egyptian army's victory over Israel on 6 October, 1973. "Today we mark the anniversary of the Tenth of Ramadan victory, this precious memory that...

A human rights group denounced today an "illegitimate" decision by the Bashar Al-Assad regime to hold presidential elections in the war-ravaged country next month, Anadolu Agency reports. Presidential elections that are unilaterally set by the Bashar al-Assad regime are illegal and will destroy the ongoing political process aimed at...

The sick and dying are rapidly pushing Gaza's hospitals close to capacity amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in the impoverished Palestinian territory, Reuters quoted health officials saying. Palestinians fear a combination of poverty, medical shortages, vaccine scepticism, poor COVID-19 data and mass gatherings during Ramadan could accelerate the increase, which...

Pope Francis today promised Lebanon's Prime Minister-designate Saad Al-Hariri that he would visit the country but only after political forces put aside differences for the good of the people, Reuters reported. The Vatican said Al-Hariri, who will also meet with Italian leaders during a short visit, held talks with the pope...

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi discussed the Middle East Peace Process and relations with the US in a meeting with the head of the World Jewish Congress in Cairo on Wednesday. According to Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Bassam Rady, Sisi's meeting with Ronald S. Lauder was also attended...

The Palestinian Journalists Forum held a solidarity event outside the Red Cross headquarters in Gaza demanding the release of Alaa Al-Rimawi who was detained by occupation forces from his home in the occupied West Bank yesterday. Occupation forces detained Al-Rimawi, from the city of Ramallah in the central West...

Israel's ambassador to Britain, Tzipi Hotovely, has been snubbed by a Zionist youth movement because of the 42 year old's "racist and anti-pluralistic views". The UK-based Noam is affiliated with the Conservative-Masorti Jewish movement, and led a boycott of the controversial far-right Israeli envoy by refusing to take part...

Turkey will continue to carefully abide by the decades-old international pact, Montreux Convention, governing the Istanbul Straits leading into the Black Sea, the foreign minister said yesterday. Mevlut Cavusoglu said: "In the last century, the Black Sea was never a sea of military confrontation, not even during World War...

Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are pressing President Biden to become the first US president to acknowledge the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as a "genocide" on 24 April when annual commemorations are held around the world, the LA Times reports. Armenian Americans, including the large...

A Palestinian professor said that he was denied a job because of his views on Israel and has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Illinois Congresswoman Marie Newman. Iymen Chehade is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Columbia College Chicago. Chehade claims that he had a signed agreement...

United Nations human rights experts today urged Switzerland to repatriate two Geneva sisters from a squalid camp in north-eastern Syria five years after the girls were allegedly abducted by their mother who joined Daesh, Reuters reported. More than 60,000 people, two-thirds of them children, are held in camps for families associated...

The family of a former top Saudi intelligence official who is living in exile and locked in an international feud with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman say they have become pawns in the kingdom's efforts to bring the spy chief home. A Saudi court jailed two of Saad Al-Jabri's...

A brief but revealing press statement marked the meeting of US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield with the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini. Neutrality, a politicised status that underscores the agency's approach to political events, is one of the...

READ: Learn how to make Atayef...

A 13 year old Syrian refugee has embarked on a remarkable Ramadan challenge to raise funds and awareness of the plight of refugees from Middle Eastern countries and around the world by campaigning in front of the Houses of Parliament in London every day of the fasting month. Inspired...

Egyptian pharmaceutical firm Minapharm has agreed to produce more than 40 million doses a year of Russia's Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine, Reuters reported the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), which markets the vaccine abroad, saying today. The two parties agreed to begin technology transfer immediately, it said in a joint statement...

There has been an outcry online after an episode of Egypt's Ramadan drama, The Choice 2, re-enacted the Rabaa massacre, but from the perspective of the security forces. The series, which is produced by Synergy, a production company owned by Egypt's intelligence services, depicts the protesters as armed and violent...

Iran has installed extra advanced centrifuges at its underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz that was hit by a blast last week, a report by the UN atomic watchdog showed yesterday, deepening Iran's breaches of its nuclear deal with major powers, Reuters reported. The explosion and a power outage damaged an unknown number of...

Reporters Without Borders has said that the MENA region is the "toughest and most dangerous for journalists" following the publication of its yearly report which ranks 180 countries and regions according to the level of freedom for journalists. This year's report said that the global coronavirus pandemic has led...

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu announced that his country has begun talks to purchase a new batch of Russian-made S-400 missile defence systems. Cavusoglu added that the Turkish administrations, including the Ministry of Defence, are currently discussing the purchase, while criticising the US' position on the deal, pointing out...

The president of Libya's Presidential Council, Mohamed Al-Menfi, ordered the army on Wednesday to take immediate action to secure the country's southern border with Chad. The move came a day after the death of Chad's President Idriss Déby. Al-Menfi's official directive was posted on Twitter by Najwa Wahiba, the...

As many as 26 Palestinian journalists are currently detained by Israel for publishing news on social media. In a statement, the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza said Israel is practicing the most heinous attacks Palestinian journalists and media professionals. Journalists have been harassed, tortured and fined, the statement...

The head of the Journalists' Syndicate in Jordan resigned from his position on Wednesday. [ said that he does not intend to stand for the job again in the future. Al-Saaydeh took to Facebook to explain that he has had enough of "injustice, denial, ingratitude and abuse", but he...

Palestinian from Gaza Loay Elbasyouni has helped American space agency NASA successfully fly a small helicopter on Mars. Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flew over the red planet two days ago, in a feat which NASA says represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another planet. Elbasyouni, who...

A member of Sudan's Transitional Sovereignty Council ruled out on Wednesday the possibility of resorting to the military option to resolve border and water issues. The latter includes the matter of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. "The transitional government stands behind the armed forces and supports them as they...

Jordan did not receive medical aid from Israel, state-owned Petra quoted an official source as saying yesterday. "Jordan has enough Covid-19 tests, secured its needs of ventilators and facial masks that are produced by its factories, and these are what the press reports said the kingdom had received from...

Jordan's Senate Speaker Faisal Al-Fayez said on Wednesday that Prince Hamzah Bin Hussein had agreed not to speak to the media and not even answer phone calls, it has been reported. Al-Quds Al-Araby cited a report by France 24 saying that this agreement came as part of a deal...

A Syrian missile exploded in southern Israel today, the Israeli military said, in an incident that triggered warning sirens near the secretive Dimona nuclear reactor and an Israeli strike in Syria, Reuters reports. An Israeli military spokesman identified the projectile as an SA-5 surface-to-air missile fired by Syrian forces against Israeli...

Saudi security forces stormed the house of Palestinian detainee Mohamed Al-Khodari in Jeddah yesterday and took his 70-year-old wife Wijdan and daughter-in-law to a security centre, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said. According to Euro-Med, both women were detained for several hours and were released after authorities forced them...

The European Union announced on Wednesday that it will continue to fund an education project for Syrian children in Turkey. The project known by its acronym PIKTES — Promoting the Integration of Syrian Kids into the Education System — is to be funded for at least another year. The...

Fifty Egyptian doctors have died of coronavirus in the past two weeks alone, bringing the number of those who have succumbed to the virus to 466, the Egyptian Medical Association said in a statement. The syndicate called on the Ministry of Health to speed up the vaccination drive for health...

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi cancelled the licences for 1,128 investment projects on Wednesday due to their low completion rate, Anadolu has reported. Al-Kadhimi gave the order for the move during a visit to Iraq's Investment Authority. "All licences for projects with a completion rate of between 0 and...

Self-styled Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar is a serious hurdle facing the Government of National Unity (GNU). He could prove to be a more complex issue than initially expected, taking time and patience to resolve. It is misleading to assume that dealing with Haftar is an easy political-military issue. How...

Mehmet Bozdag is a 38-year-old Turkish screenwriter, director and producer. He has become tremendously well-known after producing the widely-celebrated series Ertugrul. Bozdag pays attention to the smallest details in his productions, including the actors' costumes and the shooting location. At a time when Egyptian drama producers avoided producing series with...

According to an official reported issued on Tuesday by the Israeli Ministry of Finance, Israel's debt has jumped to NIS 984 ($302 billion). Compared with 2019, the debt has increased by about 20 per cent – NIS 823 billion ($253 billion). The interest rate in relation to the debt...

Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi on Wednesday submitted documents to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas proving Palestinian ownership of Jerusalem's neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Wafa news agency reported. "We have provided all the documents that we have, which can help the Palestinian residents to...

Fawzi Al-Daas, the director of Tunisian President Kais Saied's 2019 election campaign, announced that the military judiciary had opened an investigation on 20 April into accusations made by MP Rached Khiari. Khiari has alleged that Saied received US funding to boost his chances of winning the presidency, sparking widespread...

Ethiopia on Wednesday proposed holding a meeting of the African Union to end the stalemate in the Renaissance Dam negotiations between Addis Ababa, Cairo and Khartoum. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry announced in a statement, of which Anadolu Agency obtained a copy: "Ethiopia believes that the solution to push the...

The Palestinian Authority (PA)'s leadership is committed to carrying out the Palestinian elections within the timeframe of the presidential decrees and specified dates, Spokesperson of the PA's Presidency Nabil Abu Rudeineh stressed on Wednesday. Speaking to Voice of Palestine radio, Abu Rudeineh stated: "Nothing will change nor will there...

Northwest Syria received its first batch of coronavirus vaccinations through the global vaccine-sharing platform COVAX on Wednesday with inoculations set to start May 1. Reuters reports. A total of 54,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Syria's Idlib, the first for opposition-held Syrian territory, through the Bab al...

Facebook says it has disrupted a long-running cyberespionage campaign run by Palestinian intelligence which features spies posing as journalists and the deployment of a booby-trapped app for submitting human rights stories, Reuters reports. In a report published Wednesday, Facebook accused what it said was the cyber wing of the...

Iran's support for Yemen's Houthi movement is "quite significant and it's lethal," US special envoy on Yemen Tim Lenderking said on Wednesday, as he called a battle for Yemen's gas-rich Marib region the single biggest threat to peace efforts, Reuters reports. Lenderking told US lawmakers that Iran supports the...

The Palestinian Ministry of Religious Endowments in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday condemned the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)'s exclusion of religion from its digital education platform dedicated to Palestinian refugee students. In a statement, the Endowments Ministry described this measure as "dangerous" and "targeting...

Morocco's Royal Armed Forces (FAR) have signed a contract worth $70 million (626 Moroccan dirhams), to purchase 13 Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 combat drones. The deal also includes four remote control ground stations, a configurable simulation system for operating the drones, and a digital system for tracking and storing information, according to a post...

Whistle-blowers never fare very well when trying to shine a light on wrongdoing, and the latest pro-Palestinian group of activists to emerge in Britain appears to be no exception. Palestine Action, which has targeted Israel's largest arms company's factories and offices in Britain, has now accused the police of...

Israeli occupation authorities issued demolition notices to 13 houses inhabited by Palestinians in the village of Qabalan, south of the occupied northern West Bank city of Nablus, reported Wafa news agency. The demolitions of the Palestinian homes were ordered under the pretext that they lack the necessary building licenses. Ghassan Daghlas,...