GENEVA Yemen faces a “famine of Biblical proportions”, veteran aid expert Jan Egeland warned on Wednesday during a visit to the war-battered nation, expressing fury over the failure of the “men with guns and power” to end the crisis. Yemen’s two years of civil war have pitted the Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group against a Saudi-backed coalition, causing economic collapse and severely restricting the food and fuel imports […]
China plans to launch its own online encyclopaedia next year, hoping to build a “cultural Great Wall” that can rival Wikipedia as a go-to information source for Chinese Internet users who Beijing fears are being corrupted by foreign influences China plans to launch its own online encyclopaedia next year, hoping to build a “cultural Great Wall” that can rival Wikipedia as a go-to information source for Chinese […]
A big part of that is its watering down of the anti-Semitic language of the original Hamas charter in 1988, with its talk of war between Arabs and Jews. “We are making it clear that ours is a liberation project — not about religion or the Jews,” Mr. Meshal said in an interview on Tuesday in Doha, his latest home. Continue reading the main story His offer […]
By Matt Spetalnick | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON Donald Trump’s national security adviser described his boss’s foreign policy approach as “disruptive” on the eve of the U.S. president’s first White House meeting with the Palestinian leader, saying his unconventional ways could create an opportunity to ultimately help stabilize the Middle East. Trump faces deep skepticism at home and abroad over his chances for a breakthrough with Palestinian President Mahmoud […]
May 2, 2017 by: Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran Iran’s hardliners are committed to the nuclear deal with world powers even as they use the accord to attack President Hassan Rouhani ahead of elections this month, a senior hardline politician said. The agreement was a “done deal” and there would be no attempts to sabotage it, said Alireza Zakani, a senior figure in the hardliners’ camp and a […]
Mr. Ghasemi’s remarks, at a regular weekly news conference reported by Iranian media, did not suggest a negotiation was underway for the release of the Americans, all of them dual citizens of the United States and Iran. Continue reading the main story Mr. Ghasemi did not identify any of them by name. At least four Americans of Iranian descent are known to be held in Iranian prisons […]
Dubai, United Arab Emirates – 1 May 2017 It might take the Arab World 15 years to rebuild from the destruction caused by the Arab Spring, experts said at the Arab Media Forum on Monday. “It might take the countries at least 15 years to rebuild their economies and societies affected by the so-called Arab Spring – or what I call the Arab Destruction – that caused […]
DUBAI: Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit warned Monday that Iran and Israel were the main beneficiaries of turmoil across the Arab world, which he described as the worst he has ever seen.“I have never seen anything worse than what we are now seeing,” Abul Gheit said at the Arab Media Forum in Dubai.“Iran is enjoying what the Arab world is going through. There are those in […]
Mr. Abbas was scheduled to meet with Mr. Trump in Washington on Wednesday as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. He has sought in recent weeks to rein in Hamas, cutting salaries and refusing to pay for electricity, in a bid to undermine the group’s authority. Gazans now have only a few hours of power a day. Continue reading the main story “Whether it’s a coincidence […]
GENEVA The United Nations is continuing to receive signals that the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen could attack the key port of Hodeidah, causing humanitarian suffering and loss of life, U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said on Monday. A Saudi-led military coalition backing the internationally-recognised government in its war against the Houthi rebels has been preparing an assault on Hodeidah. “The U.N. is concerned about […]
ISTANBUL The head of an Iranian satellite television network who last year was sentenced in absentia to six years in prison by a Tehran court was shot dead in Istanbul together with a business partner, Turkey’s Dogan news agency said on Sunday. GEM TV founder Saeed Karimian and an associate were driving in Istanbul’s Maslak neighbourhood after 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) on Saturday when their car was […]
LONDON Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has criticised President Hassan Rouhani for saying his detente policy with the West had caused the threat of war to fade as tensions intensify in Tehran before May election. Rouhani, a pragmatist whose election in 2013 led to a diplomatic thaw between Iran and the West, championed in 2015 a landmark deal in which Tehran agreed to curb its nuclear […]
The clapping had barely subsided before comedian Hasan Minhaj cracked a joke about the elephant not in the room — President Donald Trump. “Welcome to the series finale of the White House Correspondents’ dinner,” said Minhaj, the dinner’s headliner and a senior correspondent at “The Daily Show.” “My name is Hasan Minhaj, or I’ll be known in a few weeks, No. 830287.” Within minutes of beginning his routine, […]
BEIRUT Fighting between rebel groups in the biggest insurgent stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus entered a second day on Saturday, while government forces pressed an offensive against the besieged enclave, a war monitor said. The clashes broke out in part of the densely-populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta which has been besieged by Syrian government forces since 2013. The Syrian Observatory […]
WASHINGTON President Donald Trump complained on Thursday that U.S. ally Saudi Arabia was not treating the United States fairly and Washington was losing a “tremendous amount of money” defending the kingdom. In an interview with Reuters, Trump confirmed his administration was in talks about possible visits to Saudi Arabia and Israel in the second half of May. He is due to make his first trip abroad as […]
By Phil Stewart and Yara Bayoumy | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON When U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis greeted Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister at the Pentagon last month, the first thing he did was joke about the time “the Iranians tried to murder you.” Mattis’ reference to a foiled 2011 plot, denied by Iran, was a telling sign of how much more aligned President Donald Trump’s administration is with Gulf […]
By Yeganeh Torbati | WASHINGTON WASHINGTON The United States issued about 40 percent fewer temporary visas in March to citizens of seven countries covered by President Donald Trump’s temporary travel bans than it did in an average month last year, according to a Reuters analysis of preliminary government data released on Thursday. At the same time, the data showed that the total of U.S. non-immigrant visas issued […]
Two Saudi soldiers were killed Thursday in a rocket attack near the border with war-torn Yemen, the interior ministry said. They died in a simultaneous landmine explosion and rocket attack while on duty patrolling the border around Jazan, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency. Saudi Arabia leads a Gulf coalition that has battled Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen for two […]
JERUSALEM Israel’s Patriot anti-aircraft missile system shot down an aerial target over the Golan Heights on Thursday, the Israeli military said. Israeli media said residents in the northern Israeli town of Safed reported seeing two missiles being launched and of explosions occurring afterwards. It was initially unclear whether the target, which media said was an unmanned drone, was shot down over Syria or Israeli-controlled territory. The incident […]
A recent Saudi government and security shake-up aims to strengthen King Salman’s increasingly powerful son against a royal rival and to bolster ties with Washington, analysts and diplomats say. Royal decrees at the weekend saw a number of allies of Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman moved into key positions and another son of the king named as ambassador to Washington. The goal, a foreign diplomat told […]
Yoav Galant, the Israeli construction minister, also declined to confirm the strikes but told Channel 10, “Our enemies must know: We will know to use our power to protect our interests by ourselves.” Continue reading the main story Large explosions were heard miles from the airport that serves Damascus, the Syrian capital, and the glow of flames could be seen in the distance, according to residents in […]
Increasingly sophisticated hackers possibly linked to a foreign nation aimed to disrupt key organisations in Saudi Arabia, the US-based cyber security firm McAfee said. It did not name the possible attacker but US intelligence officials said they suspected a link to the kingdom’s regional rival Iran after the Shamoon virus struck the Saudi energy sector in 2012. Renewed Shamoon campaigns that began late last year attacked a […]
Over the years, we’ve seen technologies push the envelope on reality. When the Iranians shot off a bunch of missiles in 2008, for example, it was quickly discovered that they fired only one missile and just Photoshopped the rest in. More recently, on social media, it can be difficult to know fact from fiction. Now we have Lyrebird, a Montreal-based startup that says it can […]
ANKARA Turkey will not wait at Europe’s door forever and is ready to walk away from EU accession talks if rising Islamophobia and hostility from some member states persist, President Tayyip Erdogan told Reuters in a wide-ranging interview on Tuesday. Speaking at the presidential palace less than two weeks after winning sweeping new powers in a referendum, a relaxed Erdogan said a decision by a leading European […]
