All Stories Archive

A 33-year-old Israeli soldier who set himself on fire after the Defence Ministry denied his request for disability status, died from his wounds today. The soldier, identified as Bar Kalaf, suffered severe injuries and was immediately rushed to Sheba Medical Centre at Tel Hashomer on Tuesday. His family blamed the negligence...

About 3,600 nests of loggerhead turtles, also known as Caretta caretta, were found in Turkiye's Mediterranean coastal province of Antalya, Anadolu Agency reports. Some 2,000 of the nests were found in the Belek district and 1,600 others in the Kiziliot district of Antalya, one of Europe's largest Caretta caretta...

American support for Israel no longer serves strategic US interests, says Steven Simon, Washington's former National Security Council senior director for the Middle East and North Africa. Simon, who directly managed the Israel-Palestine file, served under the administration of former US President Barack Obama. He urged the US to...

On the Russian President's upcoming visit to Turkiye, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that the date has not yet been set, but talks continue and, hopefully, Vladimir Putin will visit in August, Anadolu Agency reports. "The date is not clear, but the Foreign Minister, head of the...

Early this week, hundreds of people in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis took to the streets calling for the Administrative Committee in the besieged enclave to provide them with a better quality of life. They also called for lifting alleged restrictions imposed on freedom of expression in...

Russian and seven African leaders, on Friday, called on the UN to take necessary action to release 200,000 tons of Russian fertiliser stuck on European seaports for immediate delivery to the world's second-largest continent, Anadolu Agency reports. In a joint statement, published on the Kremlin website, the presidents of...

The number of settler-related incidents in the Occupied Palestinian Territory reached 591 in the first six months of 2023, the UN said on Friday, Anadolu Agency reports. "That's an average of 99 incidents every month and a 39 per cent increase compared with the monthly average of the whole...

The head of Hamas' political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, has made a series of contacts with senior Lebanese officials and discussed the latest developments in the Ain Al-Hilweh refugee camp, Quds Press reported citing a Hamas statement issued yesterday. According to the statement, Haniyeh spoke on the phone with Lebanese caretaker Prime...

A 21-year-old Palestinian detainee in Israeli custody was tased by two Israeli officers last week while he was handcuffed to a hospital bed at Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem. The hospital authorities immediately filed a complaint with the Police Internal Investigations Department (PIID), expressing their concern at the officers'...

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) yesterday announced that it has signed three agreements with Germany worth €28 million ( $30.6 million) to support Palestinian refugees, Anadolu news agency reported. The agency said the three agreements were signed by the German Development Bank (KfW). "The German government...

WATCH: French pundit lashes out at hijabi footballer...

An Iranian-born woman has burnt a copy of the Quran in the Swedish capital Stockholm under police protection. The woman, Bayrami Marjan, 47, set fire to the Quran at the Angbybadet beach in Bromma on the shore of Lake Malaren. ??☪️ Another Quran burner pops up-Iranian immigrant sets holy...

Banks from four Arab countries are interested in investing in Lebanon's struggling banking sector, according to an Associated Press report. Lebanon is facing the worst economic crisis in its short and turbulent history, which has exacerbated poverty and inflation and paralysed the public sector and infrastructure. Much of the troubles have...

Saudi Arabia will extend a voluntary oil output cut of one million barrels per day for another month to include September, it said yesterday, adding it could be extended beyond that or deepened, Reuters reported. The kingdom's production for September will be around nine million barrels per day (bpd), the state...

The commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement (Fatah), and a member of the movement's Lebanon Command, Major General Munir Al-Maqdah, yesterday warned of an "international plot" aimed at "destroying the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, especially the Ain Al-Hilweh camp; which...

After almost a decade of diplomatic deadlock, Egypt and Turkiye have agreed to restore diplomatic ties and high-level visits have already taken place between two countries. Recently, Egypt's commerce minister was in Turkiye and it was agreed the two sides would raise trade levels to $15 billion by 2030....

WATCH: No Ban? As Egypt releases Barbie film...

The annual commemoration of the Beirut blast has now become a symbol of something else: an outpouring of grief and emotion, accompanied by a staggering lack of action in identifying those responsible. Though the memory of the blast remains vivid, the pursuit of justice seems to have been forgotten....

Saudi Arabia jailed an Egyptian psychiatrist on charges of terrorism last year in an "unfair trial" due to a salary dispute that he won in the kingdom, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has revealed. According to the rights group, 66-year-old Egyptian psychiatrist Sabri Shalabi – who was employed by the Saudi...

Israeli occupation forces yesterday arrested the senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, Sheikh Khaled Saleh Abu Zina, from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank. Israeli occupation forces, backed by dozens of military vehicles, raided Jenin in the early hours of the morning and...

The Islamic Jihad movement has called for mass protests in support of the Palestinian resistance and to denounce the political arrests carried out by the Palestinian Authority's security services in the occupied West Bank. The movement said in a statement that the protests will also come as an affirmation...

Archbishop Atallah Hanna, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Sebastia, has slammed events in the Ain Al-Hilweh camp in Lebanon as "shameful." "The use of weapons in the camps between brothers is a very serious issue," he said in reference to fatal shootings that recently took place in the camp....

The United States would continue to do "whatever is necessary" to ensure Russia can freely export food if there was a revival of a deal allowing the safe Black Sea export of Ukrainian grain, US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said on Thursday, Reuters reports. Russia, last month, quit the July 2022 deal...

Iran's Foreign Minister has invited his Kuwaiti counterpart to Tehran, Kuwait said on Thursday, as tensions simmer over the offshore Durra gas field, Reuters reports. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait claim exclusive joint rights to the field, while Iran also claims a stake and says a Saudi-Kuwaiti agreement to develop...

Parliamentary elections in the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) of northern Iraq are set for February next year, the presidential office announced on Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. The parliamentary elections will be held on 25 February, 2024, it said in a statement. Parliamentary elections in the KRG, which are supposed...

Recent "reckless" attacks on Islam's holy book, the Quran, in Denmark and Sweden are "individual" provocations, the EU said on Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. "The EU has always been clear that manifestations of racism, xenophobia and related intolerance have no place in Europe," Nabila Massrali, the EU spokesperson for...

The revival of the Black Sea grain deal is significant for global food price stability and continued access to food in poor countries, Anadolu Agency reports. Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement of withdrawal from the deal on 17 July, the matter resurfaced in a telephone conversation between Turkish...

A parliamentary watchdog has called on the United Kingdom's Foreign Office to formally apologise to a British national who was detained and tortured by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), stating that the government department failed to act immediately and to notice signs of torture. Matthew Hedges, an academic from...

Lebanon, on Thursday, handed over to Italy a suspected Italian drug dealer arrested weeks ago near the capital, Beirut, the Italian police said, Anadolu Agency reports. Sought with an international arrest warrant, Bruzzaniti was arrested while he was having dinner at a restaurant in the city of Jounieh. He...

As the Biden administration has been a disappointment for them, Palestine is "increasingly turning to China", said the Palestinian Foreign Minister on Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. "Three years have passed since President Biden's promises, but we have seen nothing other than financial support to the UN Relief and...

Turkiye has withdrawn from hosting the United Nations' Cop16 biodiversity summit in 2024, citing three large earthquakes in February that devastated parts of the country, Reuters reports. According to the report, the UN convention on biological diversity announced that Turkiye had withdrawn due to "a force majeure situation", inviting other countries...

Turkiye's governing party has criticised a reported decision by Walt Disney Co's Disney+ not to broadcast a documentary series about modern Turkiye's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, on its streaming service, Turkish local media reports. According to the report, Ebubekir Sahin, Chairman of Turkiye's television watchdog, RTUK, announced the probe on Tuesday...

The closure of Nigel Farage's bank account at Coutts, a prestigious private bank in London, sparked a political and media frenzy, exposing the glaring hypocrisy and double standards within the British Establishment. For decades, prominent UK charities, pro-Palestine civil society groups and respected British Muslims have faced the abrupt...

Turkiye has appointed a woman as an Admiral for the first time in Turkish Naval Forces history, following a Supreme Military Council meeting Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. Staff Colonel, Gokcen Firat Yas, will become Rear Admiral in the Turkish Naval Forces. The decision came after the closed-door meeting that was chaired...

Turkiye's long-standing anti-imperialist stance and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's famous motto "The world is bigger than five," has been a factor in the rising anti-colonialist sentiment in West Africa, an expert said, Anadolu Agency reports. Professor Enver Arpa, Director of the Regional Studies Institute of the Ankara Social Sciences...

No one has been found guilty in connection with a port explosion in Lebanon in 2020, Amnesty International said Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. "The Lebanese authorities have had three years to investigate what caused the devastating explosion in Beirut's port and to hold those suspected of criminal responsibility to...

READ: Egypt court lifts order to seize funds of 146 Muslim Brotherhood members...

Seven Danish opposition parties, on Thursday, voiced objection to the government's efforts to make it illegal to burn copies of the Quran, arguing that legislation would be an unacceptable restriction on freedom of expression, Reuters reports. Outrage in the Muslim world over desecration of the Quran in front of...

A Syrian national accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes through torture and enslavement between 2012 and 2015 has been arrested in Germany, Reuters reported prosecutors saying on Friday. The suspect, named only as Ahmad H, was a leader of a so-called shabiha militia that assisted the government of President...

The Palestinian Authority is hoping to engage with Saudi Arabia to discuss their concerns over a potential agreement normalising relations with Israel, Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyad Al-Maliki, said on Thursday, Reuters reports. US President Joe Biden said, last week, a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel "may be under...

The estimated number of people facing acute food insecurity in Sudan has risen faster than expected to 20.3 million, or 42 per cent of the population, as a conflict between rival military factions deepens a humanitarian crisis, a food security body said, Reuters reports. The worst hit areas include...

For nearly three years now, 10 portraits on the outer wall of a Beirut fire station have honoured its fire-fighters killed in the explosion at the city's port, Reuters reports. Their surviving colleagues, grinding on as Lebanon's economic meltdown guts their salaries and budgets for repairs and equipment while...

The appeal against the illegal West Bank outpost of Homesh, urging its evacuation to allow Palestinian landowners access to their land, was dismissed by Israel's High Court of Justice. According to Haaretz, in her verdict High Court Justice Yael Wilner claimed that the outpost's buildings were relocated from privately-owned...

Lebanon, on Friday, marks the third anniversary of the Beirut port explosion which killed at least 220 people, wounded thousands and damaged swathes of the city. Despite the devastation, an investigation has brought no senior official to account. Here is a summary of what happened and how the investigation...

A young chef in Iraq's Kirkuk region offers Turkish cuisine to locals at a counter she has set up at a market, Anadolu Agency reports. Sara Sabah told Anadolu she tried Anatolian cuisine during her travels to Turkiye in the summer, and then decided to introduce the food culture...

The details of a meeting between the Russian and Turkish presidents, including the time, place and date, will be coordinated via diplomatic channels, a Kremlin spokesman said Thursday, Anadolu Agency reports. "In general, the presidents confirmed their intention to meet soon" during a Wednesday phone call between Vladimir Putin...

Iraq's top Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has sent a letter to Pope Francis calling for peaceful co-existence and respect among followers of all faiths, and calling for concerted efforts to reject violence. Sistani's letter was in response to a letter from the Pope coinciding with the second anniversary of the pontiff's historic...

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have reaffirmed that they have joint sovereignty over the disputed Dorra gas field in the Gulf, the Saudi Press Agency has reported. The claim was made in a statement by the foreign ministry in Riyadh. The agency quoted the ministry as saying that the two...

Human rights groups, on Thursday, underlined the need for an "independent and impartial investigation" into a migrant shipwreck off the coast of Greece in June that left more than 80 irregular migrants dead and hundreds of others missing, Anadolu Agency reports. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, in a...

The Somali Olympic Committee announced, Wednesday, that it has suspended the Chairwoman of the Somali Athletics Federation for selecting an "unskilled" female athlete to represent the country at the FISU World University Games in China, Anadolu Agency reports. A statement issued by the Ministry of Youth and Sports said...