A new Swiss payment mechanism has launched which allows humanitarian aid to be sent to Iran without falling foul of US sanctions. Cancer and transplant patients are the first to have benefited. The US said the channel was subject to “strict due diligence measures to avoid misuse by the Iranian regime”. Humanitarian supplies are exempt […]

Three protesters died after police broke up an anti-government demonstration using tear gas. Three protesters have been killed during an anti-government demonstration in Sudan even as thousands chanted support for President Omar al-Bashir at a rival rally in the capital, Khartoum. Sudan’s official SUNA news agency on Wednesday said Khartoum’s twin city, Omdurman, “witnessed riots and […]

Iran conducts one of at least two planned satellite launches amid US criticism, but the satellite failed to reach orbit. Iran has conducted one of at least two satellite launches it plans despite criticism by the United States, but the satellite failed to reach orbit, an official said. “The Payam satellite was successfully launched this morning […]

DUBAI (BLOOMBERG) – Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed that they launched attacks with missiles and drones on Saudi Aramco in the kingdom’s southern Jazan region. The rebels also targeted Abha and Jazan airports as well as Khamis Mushait base and other key targets inside Saudi Arabia in response to air strikes on Yemen, Houthi spokesman Yahya […]

JERUSALEM (REUTERS) – A leading government hawk called on Wednesday (Jan 29) for Israel to establish sovereignty over nearly a third of the occupied West Bank, hours after US President Donald Trump announced a Middle East peace plan that Palestinians said amounted to apartheid. The remarks by Naftali Bennett, a coalition partner in Prime Minister […]

The country is under pressure from international lenders to freeze public sector wages to help reduce budget deficit. Tunisia’s government and its powerful workers’ union have failed to reach a deal to raise the wages for about 670,000 civil servants, officials said, making a nationwide strike this week likely. A strike by the Tunisia General […]

PARIS (AFP) – Hydrocarbon gases bubbling from the bottom of the Red Sea are polluting the atmosphere at a rate equivalent to the emissions of some large fossil fuel exporting countries, researchers said on Tuesday (Jan 28). The gases seeping from the waters – which are ringed by the resorts and ports of several countries, […]

Bast occurred during rush hour and appears to have been ‘a terrorist act’, state television reports. Syrian state TV is reporting an explosion in a southern neighborhood of the capital, Damascus. It says the Sunday morning blast, which happened during rush hour on the first working day of the week, appears to have been “a […]

UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says three relatives of UK-based activist were detained without warrant in 2017. A United Nations human rights watchdog has called on Bahrain to release three relatives of a prominent exiled activist, describing their detention as an unlawful act of reprisal over their family connection. The UN’s Working Group on […]

The ‘man-made’ tragedy in the encampment of about 50,000 people already killed eight children this winter. Beirut, Lebanon – There was no heating to keep the tent warm. There was no money to buy the medicine which might have saved his daughter. There was not even enough milk in the breast of the mother – […]