The draft no longer mentioned a "phase-out". The text prepared under COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber, the head of the UAE's national oil company, was released on the eve of the final day of the annual climate conference in Dubai.

OTTAWA, CANADA  — A group of foreign ministers from the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and Turkey met Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau here to discuss the Israel-Hamas war. The quietly planned meeting focused on ways countries could help efforts to secure peace for Palestinians...

DOHA, QATAR - Prime Minister of Palestine Mohammad Shtayyeh called for holding Israel accountable, imposing sanctions and not allowing it to continue violating international laws. Addressing a session within the Doha Forum 2023 on Sunday, Shtayyeh called for an “urgent investigation into its crimes against the Palestinian people”. “What is...

With less than 48 hours left before the conference's official end, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber invited ministers to give their views in a "majlis" -- a traditional Gulf Arab meeting held in a circle. While Jaber called the gathering in an effort to produce a compromise, warning that "failure...

MOSCOW, RUSSIA - Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered assistance in helping to deescalate the tense situation in the Gaza Strip, according to the Kremlin's press service. This offer was made during a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “The Russian side is ready to offer all possible...

"The United Nations and several member states, including the US, have firmly rejected forcibly displacing Gazans out of the Gaza Strip," UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said. "But the developments we are witnessing point to attempts to move Palestinians into Egypt, regardless of whether they stay there or are resettled elsewhere."...

DOHA, QATAR - Mediation efforts are continuing to secure a new Gaza ceasefire despite ongoing Israeli bombardment that is "narrowing the window" for a successful outcome, Qatar's prime minister said on Sunday. "Our efforts as the state of Qatar along with our partners are continuing. We are not going to give...

With the conference in Dubai due to officially end on Tuesday, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber urged the nearly 200 nations at the talks to "show flexibility, to act with urgency and to find the common ground". Jaber told reporters that lack of progress or "watering down my ambition" was...

Antonio Guterres had convened an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council after two months of fighting in Gaza. He deployed the rarely-used Article 99 of the UN Charter to bring to the council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security".

On Friday, it said 11 pro-government forces and five HTS fighters had been killed after the jihadists launched an attack in neighboring Aleppo province a day earlier. Late last month, Syrian government bombardment killed nine civilians including six children as they harvested olives in Idlib province, reported the Observatory, which...

In a country gripped by the most severe financial crisis in its recent history-- inflation has hovered near 40% after the currency lost half its value-- the economy is the crux of Egyptians' concerns. Even before the crisis, about two-thirds of the country's nearly 106m people were living on or...

Carrying placards with messages like "bring them home now", hundreds of Israelis took to streets in Tel Aviv on Saturday to call for the release of nearly 140 people still being held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Hamas took 240 hostages back to Gaza during its bloody October...

Washington, US – A committee of the Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit under the chairmanship of Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia have held official discussions with the Secretary of State of the US Antony Blinken, here. The committee stressed their call on the...

Istanbul, Turkey - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday denounced the UN Security Council after the United States vetoed a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, describing the international body as the 'Israel protection council'. "Since October 7, the security council has become an Israel protection and defense council," Erdogan said. The United...

ABU DHABI, UAE - International Monetary Fund (IMF), in collaboration with the UAE Executive Office of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing (EO AMLCTF), held a "Fintech Roundtable" with Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) supervisors from across the globe. The event was attended by participants from 15 countries...

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - Margrethe Vestager is preparing to return to her day job as the European Union's competition chief after a hard-fought and ultimately unsuccessful bid to lead the bloc's lender. She stepped down temporarily in September after entering the race to become the next head of the European Investment Bank...

Israel bombarded targets in Gaza after the United States blocked an extraordinary UN bid for a ceasefire in the war with Hamas that has triggered alerts of an "apocalyptic" humanitarian situation. Aid workers say Gaza's humanitarian system is on the verge of collapse, as disease and starvation threaten.

PARIS, FRANCE - The family of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian Kurdish woman who died in custody, have been banned from traveling to France to collect a top rights prize awarded posthumously, their lawyer said on Saturday. Amini died aged 22 on September 16, 2022, while being held by Iran's religious police...

According to a medical source quoted by media, Israeli artillery fire targeted the " vicinity of a Lebanese army post in Ras el-Naqura, lightly injuring three soldiers". The attack on Lebanese army on Friday follows Israeli cross-border shelling on Tuesday that killed two people, including a Lebanese soldier, escalating the...

Israeli forces maintained a relentless bombardment and ground invasion across Gaza two months after Hamas's deadly attack sparked a war that has decimated the Palestinian territory and triggered an extraordinary UN bid for a ceasefire. The fighting has left 17,487 people dead in Gaza, mostly women and children, said the...

Dubai, UAE -- Petro-state Azerbaijan has cleared a key hurdle to host next year's UN climate summit despite the controversy over COP28 taking place in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates. Armenia said Thursday it was dropping its rival bid for COP29 as it tries to normalize relations with its neighbor after...

MOSCOW, RUSSIA - The chief of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, or SVR, believes the Arab world will take center stage in the struggle for a new world order next year. Sergey Naryshkin believes that in the Arab countries "the globalist elites’ ambitions to play the role of an international hegemon,...

Alareer, a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza, where he taught Shakespeare among other subjects, was also one of the co-founders of the "We are not numbers" project, which pairs authors from Gaza with mentors abroad who help them write stories in English about their experiences....

Heavy urban combat raged in and around Gaza's biggest cities as the bloodiest-ever war between Israel and Hamas entered its third month since the Palestinian group's attack on October 7. The death toll in Gaza has soared to 17,177 as per the Hamas-run health ministry, and vast areas have been...

Dubai, UAE – Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, ahead of his visit to Moscow, has emphasized the importance of the North-South transport corridor project as a key topic in his upcoming bilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, TASS reported, citing Iran's IRNA news agency. Speaking at Tehran’s Mehrabad airport before...

Paris, France - Ukraine's allies have dramatically scaled back their pledges of new aid to the country, which have fallen to their lowest level since the start of the war, the Kiel Institute's Ukraine aid tracker showed Thursday. "The dynamics of support to Ukraine have slowed," the German-based institute said, adding...

The medical charity's international president, who recently returned from the West Bank, said that since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, there had been a "clear shift" in the injuries being witnessed by MSF staff in West Bank hospitals.

Fatah chief Mahmud Abbas has led the Palestinian Authority -- which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank -- since its creation in 1994. But the PA is now weakened like never before, and Palestinian political divisions run deeper than ever since the Israel-Hamas war began on October...

Issam Abdallah, 37, was killed instantly in the strike on October 13 in the south of the country near the Israeli border. The others present -- two other Reuters journalists, two from Al Jazeera, and two from AFP -- were all injured. AFP photographer Christina Assi, 28, was seriously wounded, later...

After months of rising concern and frustration at the failure of talks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented findings following an evaluation by the State Department. Both the Sudanese army and the RSF "have unleashed horrific violence, death and destruction across Sudan," Blinken said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office wrote on X that a "minimal supplement of fuel necessary to prevent a humanitarian collapse and the outbreak of epidemics" had been approved to enter "into the southern Gaza Strip". The announcement follows the UN warning of a total breakdown of public order in...

Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Riyadh underscores the deepening economic and diplomatic relations between the two countries.

"Civilians in Gaza continue to be relentlessly bombarded by Israel and collectively punished -- suffering death, siege, destruction and deprivation of the most essential human needs such as food, water, lifesaving medical supplies and other essentials on a massive scale," UN human rights chief Volker Turk told a press conference....

European Commission, the EU's executive arm, first proposed an AI law in 2021 that would regulate systems based on the level of risk they posed. For example, the greater the risk to citizens' rights or health, the greater the systems' obligations. Negotiations on the final legal text began in June,...

The Lebanese army in a statement said that its position was targeted by the "Israeli enemy" on the southern border. The border between Israel and Lebanon has seen intensifying exchanges of fire since the war broke out between Hamas and Israel, mainly involving Iran-backed Hizbollah, raising fears of a broader...

Doha, Qatar - Qatar's ruler hit out at "shameful" international inaction over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza as he opened a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Doha on Tuesday. "It is shameful for the international community to allow this heinous crime to continue for nearly two months, during which the systematic...

Ramallah, Palestinian Territories -- Released under an exchange between Israel and Hamas, former Palestinian civilians held in various jails have described beatings, deprivation and a radical deterioration in conditions in Israeli jails following Hamas's October 7 attacks. On that day, Hamas fighters streamed across the Gaza Strip's militarized border into Israel,...

"The so-called safe zones... are not scientific, they are not rational, they are not possible, and I think the authorities are aware of this," James Elder, spokesman for the UN children's agency UNICEF, told reporters in Geneva.

Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO's representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, said that since the start of the war, there had been 120,000 acute respiratory infections; close to 26,000 people with scabies and lice; 86,000 cases of diarrhea, including 44,000 among children aged under five, which he said was 20 to...

The fate of oil, gas and coal is the thorniest issue being thrashed out at the COP28 UN climate talks in Dubai and divisions around their future have dominated the conference. The second version of the negotiating text puts three options on the table, setting the stage for a grueling...

Since the Gaza war, the Houthi rebels have seized an Israeli-linked cargo vessel and fired ballistic missiles at various targets. On Sunday, US Central Command said US warships shot down three suspected Houthi drones in the Red Sea. The Biden administration has said it will consider redesignating the Houthis a...

Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to his aide Yuriy Ushakov, will first arrive in the UAE this week and then visit Saudi Arabia to meet with the kingdom's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Putin's diplomatic journey to the Gulf region comes at a time of deepening ties with key Gulf...

Hamas statement comes days after UN Women said it was "alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities" during the attacks on southern Israel, which authorities say killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and responded with an intense military campaign that has killed 15,899...

According to Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, the conditions required to deliver aid to "the people of Gaza do not exist." He said that since the end of truce, Israeli forces have pushed into southern Gaza, "forcing tens of thousands... into compressed spaces, desperate to find...

DUBAI, UAE - The Emirati president of the UN's COP28 talks said on Monday he respects climate science, after a leaked video showed him declaring that no science says phasing out fossil fuel will achieve climate goals. Sultan Al Jaber also repeated his past statements that a phase out of fossil...

"Unlike the small change offered for loss and damage from our partners in developed countries, the Kingdom through its South-South cooperation announced in the Saudi Africa Summit in Riyadh last month the allocation of up to $50 billion," Prince Abdulaziz said in a video message to the Saudi Green Initiative...

The case concerns US-owned F-35 parts stored at a warehouse in the Netherlands and then shipped to several partners, including Israel, via existing export agreements

Armored personnel carriers and bulldozers were also seen as Israel expanded its operations against Hamas in response to the Palestinian group's deadly October 7 attack on southern Israel. Amin Abu Hawli, 59, said the Israeli vehicles were "2 kilometers inside" the Palestinian territory in the village of Al-Qarara near Khan...

Sultan Al Jaber -- who also heads state oil giant ADNOC -- made the comments during a testy exchange with former Irish leader Mary Robinson during an online forum. The 50-year-old, who is also the United Arab Emirates' climate envoy, added that removing fossil fuels would take the world "back...

"There is so much suffering in Gaza," the pontiff said in comments from his private residence, which were read by an aide and broadcast on giant screens in Saint Peter's Square. The 86-year-old is suffering from a lung infection that has caused breathing difficulties, and forced him to cancel a...