By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN A prominent Iraqi Sunni politician on Monday warned Washington the acceleration in a military campaign in western Mosul to drive out Islamic State jihadists was causing a sudden surge in civilian casualties that threatened to undermine the effort to crush the militants. Khamis Khanjar, who has used his leverage to lobby the U.S. administration and the Iraqi authorities to ensure the […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Aid workers are in a “race against time” to prevent famine threatening millions of people in Yemen, a senior U.N. official said in Monday. “We have about three months of food stored inside the country today,” Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the World Food Programme, told reporters in Amman after a three-day visit to the wartorn country. “We do not have […]
By Irene Preisinger | MUNICH, Germany MUNICH, Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel underscored the importance of free trade in a speech to business leaders in Munich, before her first trip to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington for talks on a range of issues, including defense spending. Merkel had been due to meet Trump for more than two hours on Tuesday, but her trip was postponed […]
ASTANA Russia, Turkey and Iran are pressing ahead with a fresh round of Syria talks in Kazakhstan, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said on Monday, despite a request from the Syrian rebels to delay the meeting. “We are awaiting confirmations from the other parties to the meeting,” Abdrakhmanov told parliament, adding that delegations had already started arriving in the Kazakh capital, Astana. (Reporting by Raushan Nurshayeva; Writing […]
Stuart Gulliver has told the HSBC board he will quit as chief executive next year, making the search for his successor a priority for Mark Tucker, who has decided to leave Asian insurer AIA to become the bank’s chairman. The appointment of Mr Tucker was announced before the Hong Kong market opened on Monday by AIA and HSBC, which first approached the insurer’s president and chief executive last […]
Photo Babies are carried away away from destroyed buildings following an air strike in Aleppo, Syria, in 2016. Credit Ameer Alhalbi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Children suffered a “drastic escalation” in violence from the Syrian civil war in 2016, the United Nations said Sunday in a report that showed child deaths jumped at least 20 percent from the year before and recruitment of child combatants more than […]
PARIS The French foreign ministry condemned a deadly bombing in Damascus and called on truce guarantors, especially Russia and Iran, to ensure a ceasefire in Syria is fully respected. The death toll from a double bomb attack on Saturday targeting Shi’ites visiting a pilgrimage site in Damascus has climbed to 74, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Sunday. “There is more than ever urgency to […]
DUBAI // The Government will continue to be open and transparent with its people and residents, Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed says. Sheikh Saif, also Minister of Interior, made a closing address to the Public Diplomacy and Government Communication Forum about the importance of effective communication between the governments and citizens. Sheikh Saif said the fire that gutted The Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai on […]
AMMAN A Syrian alliance of jihadist groups known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham said on Sunday it was responsible for a double suicide bomb attack in the capital Damascus that killed dozens of people. The group said the attack on Saturday targeted Iranian-backed militias in revenge for what it said was their role in supporting President Bashar al Assad’s “tyrannical rule”, holding them responsible for “killing and displacing” […]
Behnaz Shafiei would have been breaking the law in her country a year ago, but now she’s become a symbol of shifting social norms as Iran’s female motorbike champion. Source link
Saudi King Salman’s stop in the Maldives on his month-long tour of Asia brings into focus how this tiny archipelago – best known for high-end tourism and an existential battle against climate change – has emerged as a key player in a regional struggle for influence. Both Riyadh and Beijing are currying favour with the strategically located 820km-long chain of Indian Ocean atolls, in efforts analysts believe […]
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation, While the world continues to decipher, or digest, the new Trump presidency, important changes are afoot within the grand strategic triangle that lies between Russia, Iran and China Away from the current chaos in the United States, major developments are progressing, with Iran, Russia and China coordinating on a series of significant moves crucial for the future of […]
SANA, Yemen — An airstrike by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia on an open market in western Yemen killed at least 16 people, United Nations and local officials said Saturday. The attack late Friday hit a market selling khat, a mild stimulant common in Yemen, setting off a fire and leaving the dead and wounded scattered in the wreckage. هذة المجزرة ارتكبها اليوم #ال_سعود في […]
BEIRUT Syrian rebel groups called for the postponement of Russian-backed peace talks in Kazakhstan this month and said further meetings would depend on whether the government and its allies adhered to a newly declared March 7-20 ceasefire. The third round of talks is due to take place in Astana on March 14-15. The previous meetings aimed to shore up a widely violated ceasefire between the sides that […]
HODEIDAH At least 22 civilians were killed on Friday and dozens wounded when a Saudi-led coalition air strike hit a market in western Yemen causing a fire to break out, a local official said. Missiles launched by fighter jets of the Arab alliance hit a market selling the mild narcotic leaf qat, which is popular among Yemenis, near the Red Sea fishing town of Khoukha. Rescue workers […]
A federal judge in Wisconsin dealt the first legal blow to President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday, barring enforcement of the policy to deny U.S. entry to the wife and child of a Syrian refugee already granted asylum in the United States. The temporary restraining order, granted by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison, applies only to the family of the Syrian refugee, who […]
Turkey saw just four percent growth in its internet population, but that means two million more people are online. Image: Getty Images “Digital is growing faster in the Middle East than anywhere else in the world,” Simon Kemp, founder of Kepios, tells ZDNet. Kemp, a marketing strategist based in Singapore, is the author of six annual studies charting the trends in mobile, the internet, and social media […]
Photo Tajrish Square in Tehran. The Iranian economy did not get the boost many had hoped for after the nuclear deal. Credit Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times Iran’s top leader criticized the pace of national economic growth on Thursday in what appeared to be a rebuke of the president, who had forecast prosperous times after the 2015 accord that lifted international sanctions in exchange for […]
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta – The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has promised to prosecute new suspects in the electronic identity card or e-KTP graft case. The KPK spokesman Febri Diansyah said that all individuals named in the indictment were allegedly involved in graft case embroiling two defendants Irman and Sugiharto. “Yesterday’s trial is just the first step,” Febri said yesterday. According to him, the KPK would not need to […]
By Jibran Ahmad | Peshawar, Pakistan Peshawar, Pakistan Pakistan has indefinitely closed two border crossings with Afghanistan after opening them for two days to let through Afghans with visas, officials said on Thursday. The official border crossings were abruptly ordered closed last month after a series of attacks Pakistan blames on militants sheltered in Afghanistan, heightening tension between the neighbours. But Pakistan temporarily reopened the crossings on […]
Via Damiel Lang of SHTFPlan.com, Since the end of World War Two, the United States has established itself on every continent with hundreds of military bases, and has sent troops to foreign nations (both covertly and overtly) on so many occasions that it’s difficult to keep track of them all. And this doesn’t even take into account the nations that our government has quietly and successfully pressured […]
“Every day that goes by, my concern for my father and Siamak increases,” Mr. Namazi said this week in a telephone interview from Dubai, where he lives. He expressed particular anxiety about his father, who has a heart ailment, saying that an Iranian prison cell was “no place for an aging old man.” Continue reading the main story Last month, on the anniversary of the elder Mr. […]
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif held talks in Qatar on Wednesday with the country’s ruler about improving relations, soured by a dispute last year between Tehran and Gulf Arab powerhouse Saudi Arabia. Tasnim news agency said Zarif also met his Qatari counterpart during the trip to Doha, his second this year. Qatar and two other Gulf Arab states recalled their envoys from Tehran in January 2016 […]
By Mica Rosenberg and Dan Levine The state of Hawaii can sue over President Donald Trump’s new executive order temporarily banning the entry of refugees and travellers from six Muslim-majority countries, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii said the state could revise its initial lawsuit, which had challenged Trump’s original ban signed in January. The state is claiming the […]
