BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than four months after the largest explosion in Lebanon’s history sent a shock wave of death and destruction through Beirut, not a single official has accepted responsibility for the blast or publicly explained how a stockpile of explosive material was left unsecured in the Beirut port for six years. In fact, […]

DUBAI (REUTERS) – Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday (Dec 18) rejected the UN atomic watchdog chief’s suggestion that reviving Iran’s nuclear deal after a new US administration comes to power would require striking a new agreement. In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Mr Rafael Grossi, who heads the IAEA that […]

RIYADH (BLOOMBERG) – The next Gulf Arab summit will be held in Saudi Arabia on Jan 5, Kuwait’s Foreign Minister said in a statement on Thursday (Dec 17). Officials of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council meet regularly, but the next heads of state gathering has taken on particular significance following recent progress in Kuwaiti and […]

CAIRO (AFP) – Residents of Egypt’s restive North Sinai region ran for their lives when an Islamic State group affiliate occupied their villages. Now, they are returning to find their homes booby-trapped. “I lost my sister-in-law and her nine-month-old baby when an explosive device planted in their home went off,” said a young resident of […]

DUBAI (REUTERS) – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Monday (Dec 14) that Teheran’s missile programme was non-negotiable and that US President-elect Joe Biden is “well aware of it”. Mr Biden’s victory has raised the possibility that Washington could rejoin a deal Iran reached with world powers in 2015, and he appears to see a […]

TEL AVIV (REUTERS) – Israel established diplomatic relations on Saturday (Dec 12) with Bhutan, a majority-Buddhist nation neighbouring India, the Israeli foreign ministry said. Israel’s new relations with the relatively-isolated Himalayan nation did not appear to be related to its budding ties under US-sponsored accords with Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East and […]

JERUSALEM — A new Israeli television series based on true events from the 1973 war, when the country was caught off guard on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar and feared total destruction, has prompted an intense public reckoning with the scope of war trauma and the treatment of survivors. The high-impact series pried […]

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A United Nations-backed tribunal in The Hague on Friday sentenced a member of the Hezbollah militant group to life in prison after convicting him in absentia of conspiring in the 2005 car-bomb attack that killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of Lebanon. The defendant, Salim Ayyash, was convicted in August on five […]

The Iranian authorities have detained a number of people accused of involvement in the assassination of the country’s top nuclear scientist last month near Tehran, a parliamentary adviser told an Iranian state-run broadcaster on Wednesday. The adviser, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, did not say how many people had been arrested in connection with the death of […]

DUBAI (REUTERS) – An experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm has 86 per cent efficacy against the virus, the United Arab Emirates health ministry said on Wednesday (Dec 9), citing an interim analysis of a human trial underway there. The Gulf Arab state in July started Phase 3 clinical trials of the vaccine, developed […]