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Items by Reuters
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Coalition forces say they have withdrawn from around Yemen’s Hodeidah port
Yemeni forces under a Saudi-led coalition said on Friday they have withdrawn from around the main port of Hodeidah held by their foes, the Houthis, as the Red Sea city’s governor announced the reopening of a main road linking it to the capital, Sana’a, Reuters reported. The Giants Brigade...
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US lawmaker looks to block first major Saudi arms deal under Biden
Democratic US Representative, Ilhan Omar, filed legislation on Friday seeking to block the sale of $650 million air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia, the first major arms sale to the kingdom during President Joe Biden’s administration, Reuters reported. Omar said she filed the measure, known as a joint resolution of...
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Qatar to act as US diplomatic representative in Afghanistan
The United States and Qatar have agreed that Qatar will represent the diplomatic interests of the United States in Afghanistan, a senior US official told Reuters, an important signal of potential direct engagement between Washington and Kabul in the future after two decades of war. Qatar will sign an...
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Wielding fresh leverage, Iran to play hardball at nuclear talks
Iran will adopt an uncompromising stance when it resumes nuclear talks with major powers, betting it has the leverage to win wide sanctions relief in return for curbs on its increasingly advanced atomic technology, officials and analysts say. The stakes are high, since failure in the negotiations resuming in...
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Climate change threatens jobs of Tunisia’s wetland farmers
Dotted among wetlands on Tunisia’s coast, a patchwork of tiny man-made islands stretches out towards the Mediterranean. Ploughed in neat furrows and shored up by sandbanks inside a lagoon, they are home to a centuries-old system of agriculture that climate change threatens to wipe out. Ali Garsi has farmed...
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As fighting increases, Yemen’s internally displaced remain on the move
In his eighties, Mohammed Hadi Al-Harmali has been uprooted four times by shifting frontlines during the seven years of Yemen’s brutal civil war. Out of money and bedridden with a spinal problem, he is now confined to a tent in a makeshift camp outside Marib city, the last northern...
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Lebanon is dragged back into eye of Iranian-Saudi storm
Already mired in economic collapse, Lebanon is facing a blast of Gulf Arab anger after a prominent broadcaster-turned-minister levelled blunt criticism at Saudi Arabia, in a row that has further strained Beirut’s ties with once generous benefactors. Much ordinary Lebanese fear it is they who will pay the price...
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Saudi gets its first female firearms trainer
Mona Al-Khurais has loved guns ever since as a young girl her father took her on hunting trips in Saudi Arabia and taught her how to shoot. Five years ago, she turned that passion into her profession, receiving coaching in Saudi and abroad to become a licensed firearms trainer....
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Sanaa’s park exercises help people cope with stress of war
After dawn prayers Hatim Ali Hadi dons his tracksuit and heads to a park in the Yemeni capital Sanaa for group exercise sessions which help take people’s minds off the problems caused by the war going on around them. “These exercises, this running and weight loss brought back my...
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‘Like slaves’: Lebanon’s delivery riders struggle as crisis bites
His motorbike’s tank almost empty, Ahmad had barely enough fuel to make one more delivery and get home for the night. When the 24-year-old Syrian’s phone pinged with a food order in a distant suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, his heart sank. Ahmad could ill afford to lose...
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Domestic tourism is the only hope for Morocco’s ailing artisans
In a square in central Fez, the steady beat of hammers on copper has returned – a welcome signal for the ancient Moroccan city’s thousands of artisans that trade is slowly picking up after a brutal COVID-induced slump. Activity is still some way below pre-pandemic levels, and master coppersmith...
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Lebanon’s crisis pushes mental health services to the limit
Lebanese psychologist, Bernard Sousse, started offering online therapy sessions when patients said that surging fuel prices meant they could no longer drive in to see him—but then the power cuts began. Five minutes into one recent virtual session, the back-up generator in Sousse’s building sputtered out, plunging him into...
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What we have learnt from the Dubai ruler’s custody battle
London’s High Court has ruled that Dubai’s leader Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum ordered the hacking of the phones of his ex-wife and those close to her as part of a bitter custody battle over their children. Here is a timeline of the main events connected with the case,...
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Who’s running in Iraq’s elections?
Iraq holds a general election on 10 October, its fifth parliamentary vote since the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 and ushered in a complex multi-party system contested by groups defined largely by sect or ethnicity. The vote had been set for next year but was brought forward to satisfy protesters who took to...
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Better pay drove woman to become Morocco’s only female cab driver
Souad Hdidou is challenging social norms and busting stereotypes from behind the wheel as the only female taxi driver in the Moroccan capital Rabat and one of a few in the country. Hdidou, 33, started work as a truck driver after dropping out of school and worked for a...
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Saudis enjoy local sites as tourism industry sets sail
Majed Sait and his wife are spending their honeymoon on a cruise in the turquoise waters off Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, a voyage that is still a novelty in the conservative kingdom which only recently began to allow cruise ships to dock in its ports. Foreign tourism inside...
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Qatar positioned itself as the West’s main ally in Afghanistan
Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the world’s top diplomats have been beating a path to Qatar, long the gateway to the Taliban and now the essential go-between as the West tries to deal with the new Kabul government. This is no accident. Analysts describe Qatar’s emergence as a broker...
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Water shortages leave Iraq thirsty for regional cooperation
“Where we are standing right now, there should be a river,” says Nabil Musa, gesturing at a dried-up riverbed in northern Iraq. For the environmental activist, the reason the once swirling Sirwan river has dwindled to a trickle lies across the border in Iran, which he says is “controlling...
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Tunisia’s president faces looming economic crisis
At the Sidi Bahri market in Tunis, shoppers were pleased with the president’s attacks on corruption and high prices since he seized control of the government last month in moves his foes called a coup. President Kais Saied has criticised Tunisia’s economic policy, urged traders to charge less for...
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UAE hospitals refuse to issue birth certificates if fees unpaid, charity finds
Philippine national Maya and her husband lost their low-paying jobs in the United Arab Emirates early in the coronavirus pandemic and with it their work visas and health insurance. Now they say they face a mounting bill of daily immigration fines because their one-year-old child remains undocumented, as the...
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‘How will we live?’ Egyptians ask as bread price hike looms
Plans to raise the price of bread for the first time in 44 years have shocked Egyptians already struggling to get by in a country where state-subsidised loaves have kept the poorest basically fed since the 1960s. In declaring this week that it was time to hike bread prices,...
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As anniversary of Beirut blast approaches, Lebanese relive ‘indescribable pain’
For Beirut blast survivor Shady Rizk, time has stopped since 4 August last year when a huge stockpile of ammonium nitrate exploded in the Lebanese capital’s port opposite his office. “Every day is Aug. 4, every day,” the 36-year-old said. “Every day, I remember the blast or remember what...
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How did Lebanon’s financial meltdown happen?
Lebanon is grappling with a deep economic crisis after successive governments piled up debt following the 1975-1990 civil war with little to show for their spending binge. Banks, central to the service-oriented economy, are paralysed. Savers have been locked out of dollar accounts or told funds they can access are worth...
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Covid patients in Jordan left suffering PTSD
Jordanian COVID-19 survivor Abdullah Bashiti still suffers disturbing flashbacks from his time in intensive care. One of the most vivid is a vision of his doctors holding their hands in prayer as he regained consciousness after a sudden critical oxygen lapse. The 38-year-old father of four recalls the hallucinations...