ANKARA (BLOOMBERG, AFP) – Major Turkish cities including Istanbul barred people from entering nearby forests and national parks after a spate of wildfires overwhelmed firefighters and claimed four lives. The decision by Turkey’s largest city and some others came as flames raged through forests along the country’s southern Mediterranean coast and further inland. In one […]

DUBAI (REUTERS) – The tail of a Gulf Air passenger aircraft was hit by another plane at Dubai International Airport on Thursday (July 22), Bahrain’s state news agency BNA reported, in what a Dubai Airports spokesman described as a minor incident. UAE General Civil Aviation Authority said on Thursday in statement, “This morning a minor […]

DAND, AFGHANISTAN (AFP) – Married to a much older man in Afghanistan, Ms Wati – who thinks she is around 30 years old – is pregnant for a fifth time in four years, including two miscarriages. She has travelled by car to a government-run maternity clinic in a poor and rural village in southern Kandahar […]

JERUSALEM — Two rockets were fired from Lebanon toward northern Israel early Tuesday morning, setting off sirens in the country’s north, the Israeli military said. One of the rockets was shot down by Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defense system and the other landed in an open area, causing no damage, the military said. It did […]

TEL AVIV (NYTIMES) – Israel secretly authorised a group of cyber-surveillance firms to work for the government of Saudi Arabia despite international condemnation of the kingdom’s abuse of surveillance software to crush dissent, even after the Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, government officials and others familiar with the contracts said. After the murder of […]

NASIRIYA, Iraq — The provincial civil defense chief, Brig. Gen. Salah Jabar, had warned for months about the problems in local hospitals before a fire in a coronavirus ward in this southern city killed at least 60 people this week. He flagged the flammable construction materials, a lack of fire detectors and improperly stored oxygen […]

ISTANBUL (REUTERS) – Thousands of baby flamingos have died at Turkey’s Lake Tuz in the past two weeks from a drought that environmentalists said was the result of climate change and agricultural irrigation methods. Drone footage of the large saline lake in Turkey’s central province of Konya showed dead flaminglets lying partially buried in dried […]

RIYADH (AFP) – Two lawsuits pitting Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler against a former intelligence czar threaten to expose highly sensitive United States government secrets, prompting Washington to consider a rare judicial intervention, documents show. The cases in US and Canadian courts centre on corruption allegations levelled by state-owned Saudi companies against Saad Aljabri, a […]

JERUSALEM (REUTERS) – An Israeli space group is on course to make its second attempt at an unmanned lunar landing in 2024 after securing US$70 million (S$95 million) in private funding for the mission. The SpaceIL organisation said on Sunday (July 11) that Mr Patrick Drahi, a Franco-Israeli billionaire and controlling shareholder of Altice Europe, […]

CAIRO — The Egyptian government has denied a report by The New York Times that women who encounter the country’s justice system risk sexual abuse during searches by state authorities. The Times found a dozen women who said they were sexually violated by officials in police stations, prisons and hospitals. Experts said that anecdotal evidence […]