Gulf Arab states on Thursday launched new restrictions over fears of the coronavirus resurging across their countries. With populations including largely young and healthy foreign laborers, many Gulf countries have avoided the higher death tolls seen elsewhere around the world. However,...

Days after a massive explosion ripped through Beirut’s port and disfigured the Lebanese capital, family members of some of the 211 people killed in the blast demanded an international probe. It was a swift vote of no confidence in the authorities’ ability to investigate one of the largest...

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has provided a grant of $14 million to South Sudan for boosting agriculture and reduce the nation's dependence on oil. During the MoU signing ceremony on Wednesday, AfDB representative Benedict Sorie Kanu said the grant will support the Agricultural...

The Taliban have been on a diplomatic blitz since peace talks with the Afghan government stalled in Qatar last month and the Biden administration said it plans to review a U.S.-Taliban agreement signed last February. The flurry of activity — including Taliban visits to Iran and Moscow,...

Anti-aircraft missiles were fired at an Israeli drone flying over southern Lebanon on Wednesday but did not make contact with the target, according to an Israeli military spokesman. Two Lebanese security sources told Reuters that Lebanon's Hezbollah had fired at the drone. One of the...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced student protesters as “terrorists and vowed to crackdown on demonstrations opposing the appointment of a government loyalist to head Istanbul’s most prestigious university. Students and faculty members of Bogazici University have spent...

Some 2,000 people have travelled from the Gaza Strip over the past two days as Egypt opened the Rafah crossing for the first time in 66 days. In addition to the 1,927 who left the enclave, 828 re-entered the Strip, while 79 were not permitted to travel by Egyptian authorities, the...

US President Joe Biden’s administration has pulled an aircraft carrier out of the Gulf in a move to potentially ease tensions with Iran, which had soared under former President Donald Trump. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday the USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group had sailed from...

U.S. backed Kurdish-led forces and the Syrian army reached a deal on Tuesday to end a nearly three week long siege of neighborhoods under the control of the Syrian government in two-Kurdish controlled cities in northeast Syria, officials from both sides said. Streets leading to the...

Human Rights Watch Wednesday condemned the “illegal transfers” to Turkey of more than 60 Syrians arrested by Ankara and its local proxies in Syria’s northeast in 2019. Turkey and its Syrian rebel proxies arrested the 63 Syrians between October and December 2019 in the border area of Ras...

Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri flew to Egypt Wednesday for talks with President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on developments in Lebanon and the region, Hariri's media office said in a statement.

Due to fears of reprisal and violence, there have been no street protests in Myanmar against the military’s power grab over the past three days. However, people seem to have chosen civil disobedience as the way to express their opposition to Monday’s coup against a civilian administration...

 Married at the age of 12, rejected at 16, and then disfigured in an acid attack, Al-Anoud Hussain Sheryan's fate is a shocking illustration of abuse in a society beset by war and poverty. Now aged 19, the Yemeni woman agreed to relate her ordeal at the hands of her abusive husband --...

The G7 group of world’s major economic powers and the EU on Wednesday released a joint statement to denounce the coup in Myanmar and called on the military to release all those “unjustly detained”. “We, the G7 Foreign Ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom...

 From the outside, the building seems just one of the many in central Baghdad that are decaying from years of misuse - silent, windows shut. After 6 p.m., one knock on its steel-plated doors and a portal is opened to a different world rarely found in Iraq’s capital. Bodyguards...

The arrival and rollout of vaccines in war ravaged Syria may initially cover only 3% of the population in the first phase, a World Health Organization official said Tuesday. Akjemal Magtymova, said Syria is eligible to receive the vaccine for free through the global COVAX effort, aimed...

Kurdish forces in northern Syria ended a weekslong siege of government-held neighborhoods in two northeastern cities Tuesday, they said, as part of a deal brokered by Russia. As part of the agreement with Kurdish forces, Syrian government troops allowed supplies to enter Kurdish-held...

Prominent Palestinian academic and political activist Abdel Sattar Qassem died late on Monday aged 72 of Covid-19, his family said. Qassem, a professor of political science at Al-Najah University in Nablus, was well known for his activism against the Israeli military occupation in the...

A senior delegation from Islamic Jihad in Palestine arrived in Moscow on Monday to discuss the Palestinian cause with Russian officials, the organisation has confirmed in a media statement. Islamic Jihad pointed out that an official invitation was received from the Russian Foreign...

Concerns are growing about the treatment of a prominent Syrian media activist after he was arrested by Turkish-backed rebel forces in northern Syria last month. Hayyan Ibrahim Hababa, a media activist and father of three, was picked up in the city of Azaz on 21 January by security...