Jerusalem--The European Union has disbursed $24 million for the payment of social allowances to 71,162 vulnerable Palestinian families through the National Cash Transfer Program. The European Union for the past 17 years has been a steadfast supporter of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Ministry of Social Development (MoSD), collaborating to ensure...

Ankara, Turkey -- Turkey intensified talks with Ukraine, the United States, and the European Union on the grain deal in preparation for a possible meeting between Turkish and Russian Presidents Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, TASS reported. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of...

Oslo, Norway - Norway's data protection agency said Tuesday it would start fining Facebook and Instagram owner Meta nearly $100,000 per day for defying a ban on using users' personal information to target ads. The Norwegian watchdog, Datatilsynet, said Meta would be fined one million kroner ($97,000) per day, starting August...

The drop in exports was bigger than expected and the heaviest since a 17.2 percent plunge in January-February 2020, when the economy came to a standstill in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from a brief rebound in March and April, exports have been in constant decline since...

The African Union demanded Niger's military "return to their barracks and restore constitutional authority" within 15 days as the EU intensified pressure on the coup leaders by suspending security cooperation with the country. General Abdourahamane Tiani, head of the Presidential Guard since 2011, appeared on state television to declare himself...

Twitter continues to dominate its space as a platform for online comment and news, and Musk "would have to completely destroy it" to drive away its audience for good. Threads was quickly billed as a potential death knell for Twitter, but weeks later, Threads has since seen a "material decline...

Italy and the European Commission have sought to step up engagement with Tunisia, promising funding if the country undertakes to stem emigration from its territory. According to the UN, more than 100,000 migrants arrived by sea to Europe -- most to Italy -- in the first six months of 2023,...

The US tech giant unveiled Bard in February but delayed its release in the European Union as the bloc plans to regulate artificial intelligence amid concerns about risks associated with the rapidly growing technology. The company said it would incorporate user feedback and take steps to protect people's privacy and data as...

The United States supports Turkey's bid to enter the European Union but does not believe Ankara should link that to accepting Sweden's entry into NATO, a senior American official said Monday. Earlier Turkiye's Erdogan had said that EU should restart his country's inclusion bid into the EU bloc.

The European Union and New Zealand signed a free trade agreement which Brussels says can lift exchanges between the two by 30 percent with a decade. The deal, agreed in June 2022 after four years of tough negotiations, is "ambitious", said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The new British sanctions regime will expand existing penalties imposed by creating new criteria under which individuals and entities can be hit. They include any Iranian activities "undermining peace, stability and security in the Middle East and internationally", and the "use and spread of weapons technologies from Iran".

Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the UN's World Meteorological Organization, warned on Monday that El Nino "will greatly increase the likelihood of breaking temperature records and triggering more extreme heat in many parts of the world and in the ocean."

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -  Seven tech giants, including Amazon and Apple, have informed the European Union they meet the threshold to come under landmark new rules to curb their market dominance, Brussels said on Tuesday. The firms - Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, TikTok owner ByteDance, Facebook umbrella Meta, Microsoft and Samsung...

Exhibitions are also scheduled to take place on Saturday in the north and center of the Gaza Strip, where people are normally forbidden to approach and photograph military sites.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that his visit to Kyiv on the first day of Spain's EU presidency showed the bloc's "unequivocal" commitment to Ukraine's bid to join the 27-nation bloc. "My being here on the first day of the six-month presidency... demonstrates a clear and unequivocal political commitment......

President Emmanuel Macron informed Berlin he was postponing a state visit to deal with the urban rioting that has rocked France for the last four nights, as the 17-year-old whose killing by police sparked the protests was laid to rest. Police arrested 1,311 people overnight, the highest figure since the...

In early June, European Union countries reached agreement on a long-stalled revision of the bloc's asylum rules. It aims to share the burden of hosting asylum seekers across EU countries, with those refusing to do so having to pay money to the ones that do. Poland and Hungary, which were...

The rules will apply from January 1, 2025, two years later than the 2023 deadline agreed under the reforms.

The 55-year-old Harvard graduate, who steered Greece from the coronavirus pandemic back to two consecutive years of strong growth, had already scored a thumping win in an election just a month ago. But having fallen short of five seats in parliament to be able to form a single-party government, Mitsotakis...

An Algerian court of appeal increased to seven years the prison term issued to a prominent media boss, but suspended two years, a watchdog and his lawyer said. Ihsane El Kadi, 63, whose release had been sought by the European Union and international media, is one of the last independent...

The balti -- a curry of spices, coriander, onions, tomatoes and green peppers with meat or fish -- was created by Pakistani migrants to feed hungry customers from nearby pubs.

Last year's donors' conference in Brussels for displaced Syrians raised pledges of $6.7 billion, and the one before that $6.4 billion. The EU overall contributed more than 70 percent of those totals.

The EU's plans date back to 2021, the draft rules took on greater urgency when ChatGPT exploded onto the scene last year, showing off AI's dizzying development and the possible risks. There is also growing clamour to regulate AI across the Atlantic, as pressure grows on Western governments to act fast...

Saudi Arabia announced that it would jointly lead a conference on the humanitarian response to the war in Sudan next week. The pledging conference will be held on June 19, the official Saudi Press Agency said, citing the foreign ministry, adding it would be jointly led with Qatar, Egypt, Germany,...

The EU offered a 900-billion-euro aid package -- contingent on Tunisia reaching an IMF deal. But Tunisian President Kais Saied has repeatedly refused "diktats" from the IMF and the US has led accusations that the birthplace of the Arab Spring is falling to authoritarianism after the dissolution of parliament and...

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, economic sanctions have seen a significant cut in its oil and gas exports to the EU and US. However Pakistan, in the midst of an economic downturn worsening a long-running energy shortage, in May confirmed it had struck a deal with Moscow...

The EU is ready to offer Tunisia a 900-million-euro package plus 150 million euros in immediate support, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen said. Aside from trade and investment, it would help Tunisia with border management and to combat human trafficking, with support worth 100 million euros this year,...

Digging for salt is punishingly hard work, rewarded by an income that fluctuates according to whichever buyers happen to pass through town.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -  The EU exported US$1.1 billion (€1.1 billion) worth of bicycles in 2022 (both electric and non-electric, a rise of 22 percent compared with 2021), according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union on the World Bicycle Day. The imports were double the exports, with US$2.6...

European Central Bank vice president Luis de Guindos on Wednesday previewed the slowing eurozone inflation rate, calling it "positive" but cautioning that "I would not say that the victory is there".

Gita Gopinath said she believes there are grounds to provide subsidies to help stimulate innovation. Gopinath's intervention into the debate on subsidies follows frustration in Europe over US President Joe Biden's major climate plan, which grants generous subsidies to new electric vehicles manufactured in the United States.

Neither the army nor the defence ministry commented on their role in Monday's developments at Homesh when contacted by journalists. The United States, Israel's top ally, said this month it was "deeply troubled by the Israeli government's order that allows its citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh...

US President Biden said he hoped to work with Erdogan on "shared global challenges". Russia's President Putin, who has collaborated closely with Erdogan on key international issues despite some disagreements, told Turkey's leader that his win was "the logical result of your dedicated work".

ABU DHABI, UAE - Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Suhail bin Mohammed Al Mazrouei headed the UAE delegation to the Development Road Conference in Iraq. The one-day conference brought together transport ministers and officials from the Gulf Cooperation Council, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Jordan and representatives of the European Union...

Iraq looks to have renewable energies cover a third of its electricity needs by 2030 and has signed several contracts for solar plants. Its huge oil reserves are enough to produce crude at current rates for another century, but as the world works to wean itself off hydrocarbons, the country...

Twitter has decided to leave the EU's disinformation code, a voluntary pact that groups together the major social platforms, but "its obligations remain," EU Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton tweeted. Launched in 2018, the EU's code of practice on disinformation counts nearly three dozen signatories including Meta, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and...

Brussels, Belgium -- The European Union approved a historic agreement banning harmful fisheries subsidies on Thursday, joining a small group of countries that include the United States. After more than two decades of negotiations towards banning subsidies that encourage overfishing and threaten the sustainability fish stocks worldwide, a deal, albeit...

BERLIN, GERMANY — No employee should be “subject to the will of a machine”, European trade union chief Esther Lynch has warned, calling for regulation to ensure humans remain in control as artificial intelligence technology advances at breakneck speed. In the same way that European Union treaties protect health and...

Colonna nevertheless said Paris would not be changing its policy towards the Syrian ruler. "We have to remember who Bashar al-Assad is. He's a leader who has been the enemy of his own people for more than 10 years," she said. A lifting of European Union sanctions on the Syrian...

The European Union imposed an asset freeze on the investment arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, over Tehran's brutal crackdown on protests over the death of Mahsa Amini. The sanctions - the eighth imposed by the EU over the repression - came after Iran hanged three more men convicted in relation...

Meta said it was "disappointed to have been singled out" and the ruling was "flawed, unjustified and sets a dangerous precedent for the countless other companies". "We intend to appeal both the decision's substance and its orders including the fine," Meta president of global affairs Nick Clegg and chief legal...

Known to his inner circle as "beyefendi" (sir) and to admirers as "reis" (the chief), Erdogan prides himself on being able to woo doubters through tireless campaigning. This passion has helped him and his party win more than a dozen local and national elections, allowing Erdogan to claim a people's...

Regulators worldwide are increasingly worried about the lack of oversight of the digital currency sector but the European Union has already taken steps to protect investors. Last month, EU parliament approved the world's first comprehensive rules covering crypto assets.

Ghannouchi, 81, a former speaker of parliament, was arrested last month over different accusations, part of what Human Rights Watch (HRW) called last week a move "to neutralise the country's largest political party". He had appeared in court at the end of February on the terror-related charges after being accused...

The deal is also under threat in the US, where last year the Federal Trade Commission launched a legal action to block it, one of Washington's biggest ever interventions to stop tech industry consolidation. Microsoft launched its bid for Activision Blizzard early last year to create the world's third biggest...

the EU delegation to Israel said it would still celebrate Europe Day on Tuesday but regretted that "this year we have decided to cancel the diplomatic reception, as we do not want to offer a platform to someone whose views contradict the values the European Union stands for."

Jabbet Al-Dhib , Palestinian Territories -- Israeli forces on Sunday demolished a Palestinian primary school in the occupied West Bank, citing safety issues and drawing sharp criticism from the European Union which had funded the project. Palestinians hurled rocks at Israeli forces who fired tear gas at them as bulldozers moved...

Leaders in the United States and Europe sent congratulations to Britain's King Charles III and Queen Camilla on their coronation on Saturday, while China called for "cooperation" and "peace". Charles III was crowned monarch of the United Kingdom and 14 Commonwealth realms on Saturday at Britain's first coronation for 70...

Consumer prices edged up from 6.9 percent in March, which could further encourage the European Central Bank (ECB) to raise interest rates on Thursday. Analysts for FactSet and Bloomberg had predicted the rate would remain stable. The ECB has hiked rates repeatedly since July last year to rein in inflation.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM  - In the European Union countries, 75 percent (193.5 million) of people in the 20-64-year- age group were employed, the highest since the start of the time series in 2009, as per the labor force data published by Eurostat. The employment rate dropped to 72 percent in 2020...