BAGHDAD: US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner visited Iraq on Monday with the top US military officer to meet Iraqi leaders and review the fight against Daesh, officials said.The visit comes as Iraqi forces battle to retake Mosul from Daesh with support from US-led air strikes that have recently been criticized for causing civilian deaths in the city’s west.Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the joint chiefs […]
Mental health isn’t exactly one of the things that come to mind when the topic of climate change is discussed – more often, the environmental, health, economic, and sometimes even political impacts of climate change are in the spotlight, whereas mental health is pushed aside or not discussed at all. A collaborative study is now revealing that not even mental health is safe from the global effects of […]
Benjamin J. Rhodes, who was a foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote on Twitter: “Kushner in Iraq before the National Security Advisor or Secretary of State. Totally normal.” Continue reading the main story That was not the only way the trip broke with usual government practice: On Sunday evening, as word of Mr. Kushner’s trip began to spread, the White House incorrectly told reporters on […]
By Robin Emmott and Gabriela Baczynska | BRUSSELS BRUSSELS International donors are set to pledge billions more dollars for Syrian refugees at a two-day conference from Tuesday that the European Union says must also help prepare for an eventual end to more than six years of war in Syria. With millions displaced within Syria and in neighbouring countries, the United Nations has appealed for $8 billion this […]
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi | AMMAN AMMAN Syrian jets on Monday bombed residential areas in the eastern countryside of Damascus killing and injuring dozens in some of the heaviest bombing raids on the main rebel enclave near the capital in months, residents and activists said. At least 22 people were killed and scores injured after four aerial raids hit a crowded district in the city of Douma, the […]
That big hug was just what Mr. Sisi’s government sought, said Eric Trager, a scholar on Egypt at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “It wants to see the White House legitimate it, and set it on a new course.” Continue reading the main story The scene provided a powerful counterpoint to Mr. Sisi’s many critics, in Egypt and abroad, for whom he is known as […]
By Ulf Laessing | MOSUL, Iraq MOSUL, Iraq Sitting in a wheelchair and wearing sunglasses, pensioner Abdelraziq Abdelkarim enjoys the afternoon sun outside his house in Mosul after a day of rain. He does not flinch when a mortar opens fire just around the corner. His home is on the busiest frontline in the northern Iraqi city just 200 m (yards) from Islamic State positions. Outside his […]
AMMAN: US-backed Syrian forces repelled a major counter-attack by Daesh militants holding out at the country’s largest dam and in the nearby town of Tabqa, the group and activists said on Sunday.The dam is a key strategic target in the military campaign to isolate and capture the Syrian city of Raqqa, 40 km to the east and Daesh’s biggest urban stronghold.The US-backed group said militants attacked its […]
When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and more than 100 media partners began publishing the Panama Papers investigation on April 3, 2016, almost no country was untouched by its revelations. Governments in more than 70 countries have launched over 150 investigations, inquiries, audits and probes into the affairs of thousands of people and corporations linked to Panama Papers. Just last month, Malta’s tax office announced it […]
Some of the region’s leading female filmmaking talent gathered at the film and TV industry trade show Cabsat at Dubai World Trade Centre last week to talk about their careers and the challenges they face. They were assembled by Japanese camera manufacturer Canon to help promote the local launch of its new C700 cinecamera. Encouragingly, none of those we spoke to felt they had been passed over […]
By Michael Nienaber | BERLIN BERLIN Chancellor Angela Merkel said refugees in Germany must respect tolerance, openness and freedom of religion, while senior members of her party called for a ban on foreign funding of mosques. Merkel, who will seek a fourth term as chancellor in what is expected to be a tight election in September, has come under fire for allowing more than one million refugees […]
SHARJAH // The Big Heart Foundation has donated $1 million (Dh3.67m) to cover the university tuition and living expenses of 21 Syrian refugee students in Lebanon. A Sharjah-based global humanitarian charity dedicated to helping refugees and people in need worldwide, TBHF will provide the students with monthly salaries to enable them to cover their living expenses while at university in Lebanon. The donation made by TBHF under […]
GENEVA: The UN on Friday said “incremental” progress was made during a fifth round of talks between Syria’s warring parties, but warned the “real peace negotiations” had yet to begin.Syrian government and opposition representatives had been “serious and engaged” during the latest nine days of talks in Geneva, UN mediator Staffan de Mistura told reporters.He said all sides were “keen and ready to return to Geneva for […]
Photo Iraqis bathed in a sulfur pond not far from the southern outskirts of Mosul on Saturday. Iraqi forces are pushing to take western Mosul from the Islamic State. Credit Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — Facing mounting pressure over civilian casualties in American airstrikes, the United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said on Saturday that it was likely that […]
BAGHDAD Ayad al-Jumaili, believed to be the deputy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been killed in an air strike, Iraqi State TV said on Saturday, citing Iraqi military intelligence. The U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition said it was unable at the moment to confirm the report. Iraqi TV said Jumaili was killed with other Islamic State commanders in a strike carried out by the Iraqi […]
WASHINGTON Four civilians were killed in February by U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. military said on Saturday as it updated a tally of accidental deaths in the fight against the Islamic State militants. At least 229 civilians have been unintentionally killed by air strikes since the U.S.-led operation against the militants began almost three years ago, the Pentagon said in a statement. The […]
DUBAI // Three men were sentences to life for possessing almost four million illegal amphetamine tablets. On July 12 of last year, a 43-year-old from Saudi Arabia and two Syrians were arrested by Dubai Police’s anti-narcotics department in a sting operation after the authorities were tipped off that the men possessed a large quantity of drugs. “We received information that the Saudi man was part of a […]
“Trying to fight ISIS while pretending that we can ignore the Syrian civil war that was its genesis and fuels it to this day is a recipe for more war, more terror, more refugees, and more instability,” Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday night. Photo Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, left, with Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign […]
Mr. Zaidan is a former bureau chief for Al Jazeera in Pakistan and one of the few journalists to interview Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Continue reading the main story The men’s lawyers and Reprieve, a human rights group in Britain that filed the lawsuit, hope that it will force the government to not only to clarify the men’s status, but to divulge […]
WASHINGTON The White House on Friday backed top aides’ comments that the United States is not now focussed on making Syrian President Bashar al-Assad leave power, saying the U.S. focus is on defeating Islamic State militants. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Thursday drew criticism for playing down a long-standing U.S. goal of persuading Assad to leave power […]
Taken together, the moves reinforce the message that Mr. Trump plans to make security cooperation the cornerstone of the American approach to the region, without human rights becoming an obstacle, unlike President George W. Bush, who also emphasized the development of democracy, or Mr. Obama, who pressed autocratic states to ease repression. Continue reading the main story “A blank check from President Trump on human rights concerns […]
ROME The G7 group of rich nations committed on Friday to pursuing the creation of a U.N. peacekeeping force to protect world heritage sites from destruction in conflict and combating the trafficking of plundered treasures. Destroying antiquities at heritage sites like the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra and the shrines of Timbuktu in Mali has increasingly become a tactic of war for groups like Islamic State, both […]
BEIRUT More than 7,000 people have escaped Islamic State control in the Tabqa area west of the Syrian city of Raqqa since last week, U.S.-backed local forces fighting the jihadists said on Friday. The Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab milita fighters, has been battling Islamic State around Tabqa, nearly 40 km (25 miles) west of Raqqa city. Last week, they captured the northern […]
ANKARA Turkey will not remain indifferent to security risks in Syria after the completion of its “Euphrates Shield” operation, President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Friday, days after Ankara said the operation had finished. Turkey launched the incursion into northern Syria more than six months ago to push Islamic State fighters away from its border and stop the advance of Kurdish fighters. At a news conference in […]
