Saudi Arabia opens its airspace for flights to Israel, ending 70-year-old ban
March 22nd, 20180 TEL AVIV - Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv. Air India 139 landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport after a flight of over 7-1/2 hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was...
Mattis tells Saudi Crown Prince: Urgent need to find end to Yemen’s war
March 22nd, 20180 WASHINGTON - Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis told Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Thursday there was an urgent need to find a political solution to Yemen’s war, as he voiced hope for a U.N. special envoy’s peace efforts and firmly backed Riyadh. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in neighboring Yemen in 2015 against Houthis...
Hezbollah leader says Lebanon public finances threaten disaster
March 21st, 20180 BEIRUT — The leader of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said on Wednesday that the deeply indebted country faced disaster if it continued on the same financial path. Iran-backed Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s coalition government and wields extensive influence in Lebanese politics. Nasrallah was...
Iran, Yemen in focus as Trump and Saudi prince meet at White House
March 20th, 20180 WASHINGTON, D.C. ― President Trump and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will discuss tensions with Iran and a Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen which has come under criticism in Congress when they meet on Tuesday. Their talks at the White House are part of the first visit by the prince to the United States since...French judge issues arrest warrant for daughter of Saudi king
PARIS — A French judge has issued an international arrest warrant for the daughter of Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz in relation to an attack by her bodyguard against a worker in her Parisian flat, a source close to the investigation said. Princess Hassa bint Salman is the sister of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and is...
Sisi calls for big turnout in upcoming Egyptian presidential election
March 16th, 20180 CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Thursday his government had fulfilled its promises during his first term and called on Egyptians to vote in large numbers in an election where he is seeking a second term in office. The former army chief is widely expected to win by a huge margin in the March 26-28 vote, since...
Houthis and Saudi Arabia in secret talks to end war in Yemen
March 16th, 20180 RIYADH/SANAA — Saudi Arabia and its adversaries in Yemen's armed Houthi movement are holding secret talks to try to end a three-year-old war that has unleashed the world's worst humanitarian crisis, diplomats and Yemeni political sources said. A Saudi-led coalition is fighting to counter the influence of Riyadh's arch-foe Iran, an...
Interview with Sheikh Naim Qassem: We don’t expect Israel to launch war against Lebanon, but Hezbollah is ready for one
March 16th, 20180 BEIRUT — Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah does not expect its arch foe Israel to launch a war for now in Lebanon but is prepared for one, the deputy leader of the group told Reuters in an interview on Thursday. As the war in Syria enters its eighth year, Sheikh Naim Qassem also said there was no end in sight to the conflict which would...
Saudi crown prince: Saudi Arabia will develop nuclear bomb if Iran does
March 16th, 20180 RIYADH — Saudi Arabia will develop nuclear weapons if its arch-rival Iran does so, the kingdom's crown prince said in remarks released on Thursday, raising the prospect of a nuclear arms race in a region already riven with conflict. "Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a...
Hariri: Lebanon plans to boost army presence on southern border
March 16th, 20180 ROME — Lebanon plans to increase its military presence along its southern border with Israel, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Thursday at a meeting in Rome, where he is seeking financial support for the armed forces. Some 40 countries participated in the meeting, along with United Nations Secretary General Antonio...
Stephen Hawking, who unlocked the secrets of space and time, dies at 76
March 14th, 20180 LONDON ― Stephen Hawking, who sought to explain the origins of the universe, the mysteries of black holes and the nature of time itself, died on Wednesday aged 76. Hawking’s formidable mind probed the very limits of human understanding both in the vastness of space and in the bizarre sub-molecular world of quantum theory,...
Russia says U.S. plans to strike Damascus, pledges military retaliation
March 13th, 20180 MOSCOW - Russia said on Tuesday it had information that the United States planned to bomb the government quarter in Damascus on an invented pretext, and said it would respond militarily if it felt Russian lives were threatened by such an attack. Rebels in the enclave of eastern Ghouta were planning to fake a chemical weapons attack...
White House hosts meeting on Gaza crisis without Palestinians participation
March 13th, 20180 WASHINGTON - The White House on Tuesday hosted 19 nations, including Israel and Arab Gulf states, to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but the Palestinian Authority boycotted the meeting, angered by the Trump administration’s policies on Jerusalem. President Trump reversed decades of U.S. policy in December, when he decided to...
Iran won’t negotiate with West over regional presence, missile program
March 9th, 20180 TEHRAN/PARIS — Iran will not negotiate with the West over its presence in the Middle East, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday, a few days after France's visiting foreign minister sought to raise Tehran's role in regional conflicts. Jean-Yves Le Drian flew to Tehran on Monday with a brief to reaffirm European...
Iraq’s militias formally inducted into security forces
March 9th, 20180 BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued a decree on Thursday formalizing the inclusion of mostly Shi'a paramilitary groups in the country's security forces. According to the decree, members of the militias, an assortment of militia groups known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), will be granted many......
UNIFIL says ‘no appetite’ for war as Lebanon, Israel talk about border dispute
March 9th, 20180 NAQOURA, LEBANON — Lebanon and Israel have been holding talks nearly every day over a border dispute that has raised tensions between the two enemy states, according to the U.N. peacekeeping force on the frontier that is mediating their discussions. "There is a full engagement from all the sides and there have been meetings almost...
Netanyahu warns U.S. lawmakers about Saudi nuclear power deal
March 9th, 20180 WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. and Saudi negotiators have yet to reach a deal to allow American companies to build nuclear power reactors in the kingdom, but the idea is already getting pushback from Israeli Prime Minister and Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu. On Tuesday, Netanyahu, during a closed door meeting with the Senate Foreign......
This International Women’s Day, Palestinian women face more challenges than most
March 9th, 20180 March 8 is International Women's Day, a time to commemorate the movement for women's rights and raise awareness of some of the challenges confronted by women around the world. By Rebecca Stead Living under a 50-year-long Israeli military occupation, Palestinian women in the West Bank and Gaza face more challenges than most. Their...
Netanyahu warns U.S. lawmakers about Saudi nuclear power deal
March 8th, 20180 WASHINGTON - U.S. and Saudi negotiators have yet to reach a deal to allow American companies to build nuclear power reactors in the kingdom, but the idea is already getting pushback from Israeli Prime Minister and Trump ally Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, during a closed door meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in...
Palestinians in Gaza plan tent city protest along Israeli border
March 7th, 20180 GAZA ― Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are planning a six-week-long tent city protest near the Israeli border starting on March 30 to demand Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to their homeland, what is now Israel, organizers said on Wednesday. Such a demonstration, envisaging families camped out in the sensitive border area,...
Russian military plane crash in Syria kills 39
March 6th, 20180 MOSCOW - A Russian military transport plane crashed in Syria on Tuesday, killing all 39 people on board, Russian news agencies quoted the defense ministry as saying, sharply raising the death toll from the Kremlin’s intervention in the Syrian war. The defense ministry was cited as saying that the plane, a Soviet-designed An-26,......
Syria: Russia offers rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta
March 6th, 20180 MOSCOW/BEIRUT - The Russian military has offered Syrian rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta, setting out a proposal to let the opposition surrender its last major stronghold near Damascus to the Syrian government forces, which rebels have so far rejected. The Russian defense ministry said rebels could leave with their families and...
Israeli forces kill Palestinian near Gaza border
March 3rd, 20181 GAZA - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian near the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinian officials said. An Israeli military spokeswoman said that a“suspect had approached a restricted area in the southern Gaza Strip.” Soldiers then“fired warning shots into the air, and when the suspect......
Syrian government forces makes new gains in eastern Ghouta
March 3rd, 20180 BEIRUT - Syrian government forces gained more ground in an assault on eastern Ghouta near Damascus on Saturday as they seek to defeat the last major rebel enclave near the capital, a war monitor and a news service run by Lebanon’s Hezbollah said. The Syrian war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people since 2011, has...
Street artist in Yemen remembers casualties of war
March 2nd, 20180 SANAA — Yemeni street artist Haifa Subay is painting murals to help ensure that victims of Yemen's grueling three-year civil war are not forgotten. Her latest mural, portraying a one-legged casualty of a landmine, is one of many Subay has done in the capital Sanaa during the war, which has killed thousands, driven many more from......
