All Stories Archive

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria said on Sunday the government and opposition co-chairs of the Syrian Constitutional Committee had agreed to start the process of drafting a new constitution, Reuters reports. The committee, comprising 45 representatives of Syria's government, opposition and civil society, has a mandate to...

Saudi Arabia's sports fans will be allowed to attend full-capacity events at all stadiums and other sports facilities starting on Sunday, the country's ministry of sports announced in a statement on Saturday, Reuters reports. Stadiums and other sports facilities will limit entry to fans who have received two doses...

Qatar's Emir, Sheikh Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, on Sunday met in Doha with head of northern Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) Nechirvan Barzani, Anadolu reports. The meeting dwelt on bilateral cooperation and a host of issues of mutual concern, said a statement released by the Amiri Diwan,...

The UAE has come under fire by a human rights organisation, which has raised concerns following the country's recent acquisition of a female cycling team for 2022. The current men's WorldTour team, which is sponsored by the Gulf state, announced on Tuesday that it will be buying the UCI...

Rebuffing controversial statements by France's president about the colonial period in Algeria, the nation's parliament Saturday said that on a single day in 1961, some 300 peaceful Algerians were massacred by the French police, Anadolu reports. A special session of the National People's Assembly, the lower house of Algeria's...

Lack of coordination between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid on the issue of reopening the US Consulate in East Jerusalem was the cause of tension between Tel Aviv and Washington, according to Israeli media on Sunday, Anadolu reports. Israel Hayom daily said Lapid hinted...

An Iranian appeals court has upheld a one-year prison term for British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe on security offences, her lawyer was quoted by an Iranian news website as saying on Saturday, Reuters reports. "The appeals court has approved the lower court's verdict without holding a hearing," attorney Hojjat...

The United Arab Emirates on Sunday recorded a drop in daily COVID-19 cases to below 100 for the first time since the start of the outbreak last year as it hosts a huge world fair to which it hopes to attract millions of visits, Reuters reports. The Health Ministry...

A Tunisian court on Sunday ordered a lawmaker to be detained over suspected tax fraud and money laundering – the fourth parliamentarian to be taken into custody since President Kais Saied seized near total control of the country in July, Reuters reports. Mehdi Ben Gharbia, a businessman and former...

A Turkish trade delegation held talks with officials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on ways of boosting trade cooperation between the two countries, according to the UAE state news agency WAM on Sunday, Anadolu reports. The talks, which were headed by UAE Minister of State for Foreign Trade...

Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Sunday welcomed a decision to postpone the approval of Israel's observer status in the African Union (AU), Anadolu reports. "The decision by the AU Executive Council to postpone taking a final decision to grant the occupation state observer status is a step in the...

Houthi rebels in Yemen on Sunday rejected a US call for allowing safe passage for civilians and halting its military offensive in the central Marib province, Anadolu reports. In a tweet, rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam argued that the Houthis were fighting al-Qaeda and Daesh/ISIS militants in al-Abdiyah district in...

Syria has accused Israel of being behind the assassination of a high-ranking government official near the border of occupied Syrian Golan Heights yesterday. Midhat Al-Saleh, 54, an intelligence officer, was the head of Syria's Golan Affairs Office and a former lawmaker. According to the state-run SANA news agency, Saleh...

Media outlets affiliated with the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah has said that the group demands the complete closure of the independent investigation into the Beirut blast, an issue which has sparked considerable sectarian tensions and violence this week. In an article published on the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese news site...

Two​​ cyclists broke the world record for the largest GPS drawing ever created, spelling out 'Refugees Welcome' to raise funds for a charity welcoming in refugees. Georgie, from Glasgow, and David, from Bournemouth, are part of a community of cyclists called Thighs Of Steel, who have raised over a...

The Public Prosecution of the Court of Appeal in Tunis has launched an investigation on Friday into the statements of former Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki on French TV channel France24 last Monday. The official spokesperson for the Court of Appeal, Habib Tarkhani, confirmed that the Minister of Justice Leila...

The United Kingdom may consider the purchase of Turkish drones, Turkey's minister of industry and technology revealed yesterday. Speaking to CNN Turk, Mustafa Varank said that "the UK is very interested in Turkish armed drones. Now, they have to decide. We presented them with the options. Right now, they're...

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the Iran nuclear deal alongside bilateral relations and regional and international developments, according to the country's foreign ministry on Saturday, Anadolu reports. The two top diplomats discussed over the phone "the latest status of the...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday arrived at the Huber Mansion in Istanbul to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Anadolu Agency reports. Merkel and Erdogan boarded a golf cart and visited the beach area of the mansion. Standing next to the flags of Turkey and Germany, the two...

Thousands of Sudanese demonstrated in front of the presidential palace in Khartoum on Saturday to demand the "restoration of the revolution" and better living conditions, Anadolu Agency reports. Waving the national flag, demonstrators carried banners reading "Patient people are hungry" and "One people, one army" among others, according to an...

Since 1979, when Iranian students stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held American diplomats captive, the US strategy towards Iran has been aggressive. The US led the whole world to isolate Iran, turning it into a pariah state even among its neighbours and fellow Muslim countries. The US...

The Association of the Families of the Martyrs of the Burkan of Al-Ghadab in Libya (AFMBA) called on Friday to continue filing lawsuits against the militia of Khalifa Haftar for crimes committed during its attack on the capital in 2019. This came in a video statement read by the...

"Little Amal", the 3.5-metre-tall puppet depicting the journey of a Syrian refugee, arrived in the French capital on Wednesday. She met on Friday with children at Place du Trocadero near the Eiffel tower, Anadolu Agency reported. Her stop in Paris is part of "The Walk", an 8,000-kilometre journey across Europe hoping to raise awareness about the plight...

Iran has strongly criticised the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s position on Friday, which it accused of "dualism" in its dealings with Iran on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi, posted a tweet on Thursday evening stating: "The silence and...

As it condemned the killing of Shia protesters in Beirut, Iran declared that the shootings are seditions backed by the "Zionist entity", Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported on Friday. "Iran believes that the people, the government, the army and the resistance in Lebanon will successfully overcome seditions backed...

Member of European Parliament Chris MacManus has asserted that the European Union (EU) cannot continue to remain silent as new data shows a sharp increase in the demolition of Palestinian homes by the Israeli occupation, Wafa News Agency reported on Friday. "From January to August of this year, the...

In 1991, Israel was one of the first countries to recognise the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan. As a neighbour of Iran, Azerbaijan's expanding relations with Israel have always been one of Tehran's major security concerns. In the 1990s, 20 per cent of Azerbaijan's territory was occupied by...

Member of Hamas Political Bureau Khalil Al-Hayya announced on Friday that his movement had presented its vision to rearrange the Palestinian national home during the latest visit of its delegation to Cairo. Speaking to Al-Aqsa TV, Al-Hayya explained that his movement's vision to rearrange the Palestinian national home consists...

Sudan's Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok on Friday presented a roadmap to end the country's "worst and most dangerous" crisis between the political and military components of the government, news agencies reported. Speaking on state TV, Hamdok announced: "The coup attempt opened the door for discord, and for all the...

Following a request by the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israeli internal security agency Shin Bet will reveal payments made to a Palestinian collaborator, Quds Net News Agency reported on Friday. Quds Net News Agency disclosed that the Israeli District Court in Jerusalem took the decision at the beginning of the...

The celebration of Children's Day on 12 October made me remember and rewatch the documentary Born in Gaza (2014) on Netflix by Italian-Argentinian war correspondent, writer and filmmaker Hernán Zin. The documentary was shot during the 2014 offensive on the Gaza Strip and portrays the daily lives of ten...

Comparing grotesque crimes against humanity, while trying to work out which are the worst, is a wretched task. Acts of profound evil have implications well beyond their direct victims, so judging their long-term consequences is extremely difficult. What is certain to many in France right now, however, is that...

More Palestinian prisoners will join the hunger strike in Israeli jails should the Israel Prison Service (IPS) not meet their demands and lift its sanctions, Quds Press reported on Friday. According to a statement issued by the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS), Quds Press said that the "resistance programme" for...

These days, Palestinians and Israelis commemorate the 10th anniversary of the conclusion of the prisoner exchange agreement between the occupation and Hamas in 2011. Even after all these years, Israelis have a negative assessment of it. This is because the released prisoners have returned to resisting the occupation, and...

The public debate around three high-profile cases related to academic freedom in UK universities has exposed the contradictions and double standards at the centre of this row, the result of which will be nothing less than a hierarchy of protected speech and the right to hurt and offend some...

READ: Gaza marks Palestine Heritage Day...

Today marks the 86th day of Miqdad Al-Qawasmeh's hunger strike, protesting against his continued administrative detention—being held without charge or trial. Last week, the International Red Cross expressed concern for Miqdad and another prisoner, Kayed Nammoura's well-being, saying that there were concerns "about potentially irreversible consequences of such prolonged...

Hezbollah said today it would not be dragged into a civil war, a day after seven Shia were killed in Beirut's bloodiest street violence in more than a decade, Reuters reports. Senior Hezbollah leader Hashem Safieldin repeated Hezbollah's accusation that the Christian Lebanese Forces party, a group that had a powerful...

The Palestinian citizens of Israel "are here by mistake—because Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and throw you out in 1948." That was the latest rant this week from fascist Israeli lawmaker, Bezalel Smotrich, in Israel's parliament. Speaking from the Knesset podium, Smotrich was attacking Palestinian lawmakers from the Joint...

Iran is not ready to return to talks with world powers over its nuclear programme yet and its new negotiating team wants to discuss the texts that will be put forward when it meets with the EU in Brussels in the next few weeks, a senior EU official said...

Whether it is Israeli soldiers assualting and detaining groups of Palestinian schoolchildren, Syrian refugee children stranded in camps in sub zero temperatures without protection and food, or Uyghur minors separated from their parents and forced into state orphanages, there is plenty of evidence that the rights of children are...

Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, revealed harrowing details of the Palestinian teenager who was kidnapped and tortured with fire by a group of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank two months ago, in a report released last week. On August 17th, 15-year-old Tareq Zbeidi and five of his...

Tunisian President Kais Saied yesterday expressed his country's dissatisfaction with US Congress discussions on democracy in the North African state. In a meeting with the US Ambassador to Tunisia, Donald Blom, at the Carthage Palace, Saied "informed the US ambassador of his dissatisfaction with the inclusion of the situation in Tunisia on the agenda of US Congress." "The President has indicated that relations between the two countries will remain strong, despite the fact that a number of Tunisians are trying to distort what is happening in Tunisia and trying to find people to hear them abroad," a Tunisian statement added. On Tuesday, the United States, in the words of State Department spokesperson Edward Price, congratulated Tunisia on the...

Israel's poor communications with the Palestinian Authority had weakened the Arab government and strengthened resistance movement Hamas, former Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman said yesterday. In a ceremony which saw Argaman replaced by Roman Bar yesterday, the outgoing spy chief said: "Poor dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and the steps taken by Abu Mazen, led to the weakening of the authority, whether economically or popularly."...

Tunisian President Kais Saied yesterday launched an attack on his predecessor and threatened to withdraw his diplomatic passport and ban him from travel. Amnesty International has monitored the Tunisian authorities' imposition of an "arbitrary travel ban" on more than 50 citizens since last July. Saied denounced some politicians abroad "conspiring" against the internal and external security of the state. He said,...

Sudan's Sovereign Council chief, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, yesterday called for the inclusion of "new political factions" in the county's transitional government. Speaking in his meeting with the ambassadors and heads of missions of African states, as well as the African Union representative in Sudan, Mohamed Belaish, Al-Burhan said that...

Israeli authorities have stopped dozens of Jewish families of the Lev Tahor ultra-Orthodox sect from fleeing to Iran where they had applied for asylum. "Israel and the US are working to prevent members of an extremist ultra-Orthodox sect from moving to Iran, amid fears they could be used as a bargaining...

Iranian Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi warned of Israel's growing threats against his country's nuclear programme, reiterating that the threats should be condemned as a violation of international laws. In a letter submitted to the current president of the Security Council on Wednesday, Ravanchi...

The fact that Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature is welcome news, especially as the Swedish Academy is historically known for lacking in diversity, as if intellectual creativity is largely confined to Western intellectual circles. It is premature to suggest that the Academy has finally decided...

Hamas yesterday welcomed two resolutions adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in favour of Palestine at the 212th session of its executive board held in Paris. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry in Gaza said the resolutions on occupied Palestine and cultural and educational institutions were unanimously...