All Stories Archive

Israeli occupation forces today destroyed and uprooted dozens of olive trees in the town of Battir, west of occupied Bethlehem, WAFA News Agency reported. According to a local Palestinian activist, an Israeli army unit broke into the eastern part of the village during a morning raid and proceeded to raze four...

Outgoing EU Envoy to the occupied West Bank and Gaza Sven Kuhn Von Burgsdorff attracted the wrong sort of attention when he paraglided off Gaza's coast last month, purportedly promoting a promise of freedom even as the EU persists in the moribund two-state narrative. Israel described the stunt as...

A Moroccan court has sentenced a blogger to five years in prison over posts on Facebook criticising the normalisation of relations with Israel that were deemed "offensive" to the monarchy, according to his lawyer. Lawyer Hassan Al-Sunni told AFP that his client, Saeed Boukayoud, 48, "was sentenced to five years in...

READ: France calls on Israel to end all unilateral measures likely to fuel tensions...

Iranian authorities executed 11 people from the Baluch minority on drug charges within 48 hours, according to a non-governmental organisation, raising concerns that this group has been disproportionately targeted in a wave of executions. The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) said nine Iranian Baluchis and two Baluch citizens of...

Civilians are living in "unimaginable horror" in Sudan, where the army and the Rapid Support Forces have been fighting since 15 April, Amnesty International has said in its latest report, "Death Came to our Door". The human rights group points out that there have been "mass civilian casualties in...

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has expressed his support for more countries joining the BRICS group. Lula said in the capital, Brasilia, yesterday that he supports countries such as Argentina, Saudi Arabia and the UAE joining the group. BRICS, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South...

The Cairo Court for Urgent Matters has ordered the removal of seizure of funds orders issued against 146 members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, the Mada Masr news site reported. The site quoted lawyers Khaled Ali and Ahmed Abu El-Ela as saying that the court's ruling, which is the first of...

Pakistan intelligence and police agencies are using Israeli spyware, Haaretz has reported."Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency and various police units in the country have been using products produced by the Israeli cybertechnology firm Cellebrite since at least 2012," the Israeli paper revealed today. This is in spite of the country...

A number of Egyptian high school students have attempted to commit suicide over the past week due to concerns about their exam results, according to a report yesterday by The National. Egypt's secondary school examinations, Thanaweya Amma, are notorious for the immense pressure that they place on students. The...

Israeli human rights group Hamoked has revealed that the apartheid state is currently holding over 1,200 detainees with neither charge nor trial, the highest number in more than three decades. The detainees, of whom 99 per cent are Palestinians, are subjected to Israel's controversial policy of "administrative detention," a...

Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Tuesday banned Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem's Silwan neighbourhood from holding ceremonies to celebrate students' exam results, WAFA News Agency reported. Israeli occupation forces summoned the President of Silwan Club, Ahmad Ghoul, held and interrogated him for hours then ordered him not to hold...

Israeli offensives against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip increase the suffering of people with disabilities, Human Rights Watch has warned. The military offensive in May might have faded from the memory, but the wounds are still fresh, it said on Wednesday. The latest HRW report shared the example...

Tunisia is facing a "terrorist" plot that seeks to "starve the people", President Kais Saied said yesterday. This came during the appointment ceremony of Prime Minister Ahmed Al-Hachani in Tunis, according to a video shared by the presidency on Facebook. "Of the most important challenges is confronting another type of terrorism...

Despite US efforts to get Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalise their relations, the process keeps faltering. Israeli officials speak of a long and important list of demands made by the Kingdom to the Americans. Although a normalisation agreement with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Muslim world...

UAE President Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan met today with King Abdullah II of Jordan to review bilateral ties and explore opportunities to further strengthen the longstanding partnership between the two nations, the official Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported. The two leaders also discussed a number of regional and international developments. The...

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh denied on Wednesday that he had criticised Qatar for funding the Gaza Strip's electricity plant, Al-Watan Voice has reported. Earlier this week, the authorities in Gaza said that Qatar had agreed to fund the operation of the Gaza Power Plant's fourth generator to...

The President of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, received an official invitation from his Iranian counterpart, Ibrahim Raisi, to visit Tehran. This came during a meeting between the UAE Minister of State, Khalifa Shaheen Al-Marar, yesterday evening, and the Iranian Ambassador to the Emirates, Reza Ameri, at...

READ: Daily wagers in Iraq endure 50 degrees of heat to make ends meet...

The Bank of Israel raised it warning level of the threat to Israel's financial system on Wednesday, citing uncertainty related to the government's judicial overhaul. According to the Financial Post, the Israeli government's efforts to advance its controversial judicial overhaul actually poses a threat to the country's financial system...

Some 1,800 public sector employees in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and its countryside resigned from their jobs during the first half of the year, the pro- regime Tishreen newspaper reported. The paper said the employees resigned as a result of the low salaries on offer that do not cover their transportation...

More than 50 Israeli police volunteers have asked to suspend their voluntary service in protest against the government's judicial overhaul, local media reported on Wednesday. Ten other volunteer police officers have been fired for taking part in the protests. According to Israeli Channel 12 news, the police service is...

The Israeli protest organisation, Kaplan Force, yesterday accused National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, of "inciting" the police to use violence against them, Anadolu news agency reported. "Ben-Gvir wants to shed the protesters' blood in the streets," the Kaplan Force said, after Ben-Gvir described the anti-riot police forces as "heroes" following their...

The ministry of health in Israel has expressed concern that more doctors appear to be planning to emigrate and work abroad, the Times of Israel reported on Wednesday. In an emergency meeting with doctors last week, the ministry's Director-General, Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, urged them to not "give up" on...

Some 71 per cent of Moroccans are willing to emigrate to advance their careers, a new poll has found. Conducted by Bayt, the largest job recruitment website in the Middle East, in cooperation with YouGov, the poll also revealed that 71 per cent of employees are willing to move to...

Far-right Israeli Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister, Amichai Eliyahu, yesterday urged Tel Aviv to annex the occupied West Bank, local media reported. The extremist minister called the Green Line, which separates the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948  – now Israel -from those occupied in 1967, "fictitious." "I do not really think there is a Green Line. It is a fictitious line. This is our homeland. This is...

Turkish citizens in the southern province of Hatay received more than 2,000 prefabricated homes from the Turkish Religious Endowment in cooperation with the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DiTib), Anadolu Agency reported yesterday. The prefabricated house installations were carried out under the auspices of the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in...

On 25 July, 1994, the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, after a spell of negotiations, signed the Washington Declaration in which they committed to signing a full peace treaty, ending the state of war between them, in place since Israel was created in 1948. The...

During much of 1948, Palestinians driven from their homes by the violence of that terrible year took safety in what could reasonably be called refugee camps; camps for people who have fled ongoing violence or natural disaster and are unable or fearful to return. They ceased to be refugee...

Iran's Navy has unveiled new vessels equipped with missiles possessing a range of 600 kilometres, amid increasing tensions in the waters of the Gulf. According to the semi-official Tasnim News Agency today, the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Naval Forces announced the new vessels during a military exercise...

A British barge set to house hundreds of asylum-seekers will not be "a death trap", a UK Cabinet Minister asserted on Wednesday, Anadolu Agency reports. "This actual ship was previously used by Germany to house migrants, there's no reason why it wouldn't be absolutely safe," Grant Shapps, Secretary of...

Members of the ultranationalist group known as Danske Patrioter (Danish Patriots) continued the desecration of Muslims' holy book, the Quran, for the third consecutive day on Wednesday in Denmark's capital, Copenhagen, as they burned a copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy for the second day...

Firms in Israel and Saudi Arabia have signed a joint venture agreement to advance the Gulf Kingdom's transition to solar energy, in a rare public deal between the two countries that do not have official diplomatic relations. According to Bloomberg, SolarEdge Technologies, Inc – a major Israeli solar energy...

Has South Africa overlooked Egypt's problematic participation at the forthcoming BRICS summit? Dignifying its military leader Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi with the expected red-carpet treatment will in effect be an endorsement of regime change via military coup, which is how Cairo's despot overthrew the democratically elected Morsi government to gain power. This month marks...

The UN warned that hunger and displacement in Sudan are "spiralling out of control" amid ongoing fighting between the army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, Anadolu Agency reports. More than 6 million people in Sudan, about 13 per cent of the population, are now one step...

Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched a surprise military drill Wednesday on disputed islands in the Persian Gulf as the US military increased its presence in the region, AP reports. According to the report, the elite force ran the drills mainly off the coast of Abu Musa which, along with Greater...

Palestinians say that the historic town of Sebastia, located in the Occupied West Bank, is facing the threat of "Judaisation" by Israel, Anadolu Agency reports. The town is designated as "World Heritage in Danger" by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). The history of Sebastia, a...

A Turkish woman employee was seriously wounded in an armed attack on Tuesday at Sweden's honorary Consulate in the western province of Izmir, local Turkish media, NTV news reports. According to the report, the local governor's office said the attack was carried out by a "mentally disabled" person with...

Russia, on Wednesday, criticised UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, for calling its initiative to supply African countries grain free of charge "handful of donations", Anadolu Agency reports. Speaking at a news conference in Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, urged Guterres to ask the recipients how they evaluate this very...

Geopolitical events in the Middle East, as well as the recent visit of the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, to Iran for nuclear programme talks, contribute to how quickly the world is changing. With rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia brokered by China,...

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, told his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, on Wednesday that Moscow was ready to return to the Black Sea grain deal as soon as the West met its obligations with regard to Russia's own grain exports, Reuters reports. The deal, brokered by Turkiye and the United...

More than 2,000 Palestinian-Americans have travelled into or through Israel since it eased conditions for them at border crossings as part of a bid to achieve a visa waiver deal with the United States, an Israeli official said on Wednesday, Reuters reports. Ahead of a 30 September deadline to qualify its...

The international humanitarian body UNRWA was created to support Palestine refugees functioned as a surrogate state, however Palestinian refugees have continued to demand their political rights while resisting the UN's categorisation of their plight as an apolitical humanitarian issue. Join us as we speak to Dr Anne Irfan about...

As Israel's government pushes through judicial reforms that have convulsed the nation with mass protests and warnings of civil unrest, a core component of the fragile governing coalition has little interest in pursuing the policy, Reuters reports. The fast-growing Orthodox Haredi community is taking an ever-bigger place in Israeli politics,...

Egypt's Red Sea Governorate has announced plans to establish the country's first underwater military museum, reported local media outlets. The announcement was made during a meeting on Monday held by Secretary-General of the Red Sea Governorate, Major General Mohamed El-Bandary, on behalf of the Governor of the Red Sea,...

The Israeli Education Ministry yesterday banned the grassroots organisation, Parents Circle-Families Forum (PCFF), which comprises bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families, from arranging activities at schools. The decision was based on new ministry rules issued by Education Minister, Yoav Kisch, following pressure from right-wing groups, which state that programmes must...

READ: Gaza campaign aims to replace plastic bags with cloth ones...

The "Replace It" campaign in Gaza is distributing bags made of cloth to encourage residents to avoid using plastic totes, which can end up in the sea or littering the streets, Reuters reports. Under the project, funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), young Palestinian women and men tour...

Turkish forces, on Wednesday, carried out the controlled detonation of 28 artillery shells found off the Black Sea coast of Istanbul, Anadolu Agency reports. Turkish Underwater Defence Group Command (SAS) evacuated a 1.2-kilometer area before the planned detonation this morning. Anadolu captured the footage of the destruction of the...

Iraqi daily wagers, who have no social security, try to support their families by carrying heavy loads on their backs for about 10 hours a day in the scorching summer heat, Anadolu Agency reports. Temperatures can sometimes exceed 50C (122F) in summer in Iraq. High temperatures have a negative...