London, United Kingdom--The BBC's director general Tim Davie said he will not resign after the publicly-funded broadcaster's sport service was decimated on Saturday by a backlash to Gary Lineker's removal as Match of the Day host. "Everyone wants to calmly resolve the situation," Davie said in a BBC interview. Lineker was...

Abu Dhabi, UAE--Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has made a phone call to Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, during which he expressed the UAE's welcome of the Riyadh and Tehran agreement...

More than 50 boys aged 11-17, some with parents hailing from Britain, France, Germany or the United States, live at the heavily guarded Orkesh rehabilitation center near the city of Qamishli, close to the Turkish border. Opened six months ago, it is the first facility seeking to rehabilitate foreign boys in...

The Chinese government has confirmed Yi Gang as governor of the People's Bank of China, against expectations that retirement-age Yi would step down, besides retaining other important top economic officials. The cabinet faces the task of revitalizing the Chinese economy, which last year expanded just three percent.

ABU DHABI, UAE - etisalat by e& announced on Saturday the implementation of the Eutelsat Quantum satellite solution, becoming the first telecommunications company in UAE to expand 5G network capabilities over a software-defined satellite. This will give customers access to high speeds, enhanced coverage and scalability to meet future demands...

TRIPOLI, LIBYA - UN envoy Abdoulaye Bathily called on rival administrations in conflict-torn Libya Saturday to agree terms for elections "by mid-June", pushing for the long-delayed ballot to be held by year end. The Senegalese diplomat told the UN Security Council last month he had a new initiative to break a...

TEHRAN, IRAN - Iran has finalized a deal to buy Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets from Russia, state media reported, as defense cooperation between the two countries deepens. The air force of sanctions-hit Iran has an ageing fleet of aircraft and has struggled to acquire spare parts to keep its warplanes...

NEW YORK, US -  Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President-Designate Dr. Sultan bin Ahmed Al Jaber met UN Secretary General António Guterres and underscored  the UAE’s commitment of deepening cooperation with the world body on climate action. Guterres expressed his deep appreciation for the cooperation of the...

ROME, ITALY - Over 1,000 migrants were brought to safety at two Italian ports on Saturday after the overcrowded boats they were on encountered problems in the Mediterranean, news reports said. The rescues came the same day as a body was discovered of the 74th victim of the deadly shipwreck...

TEHRAN, IRAN - Gunmen ambushed and killed two Iranian policemen on patrol in the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, state media reported Saturday. The officers had been "on a mission to provide security" during Friday prayers in the town of Golshan when they came under attack, said the official news agency...

Li Qiang, one of Chinese President Xi Jinping's trusted allies, was confirmed as premier, as Xi cements his influence on the country's leadership. Li, the former Shanghai party chief who oversaw the city's two-month lockdown last spring, was named the successor of outgoing premier Li Keqiang at a meeting of...

Tunisia expelled Syria's ambassador in 2012 over the bloody repression of opponents of President Bashar al-Assad at the outset of the country's civil war. The diplomatic rupture, undertaken when former president Moncef Marzouki was still in office, was strongly criticised by the opposition at the time. In 2015, Tunisia took...

Surprise Saudi-Iran detente, midwifed by China, has gone against the drift of Austin’s visit to the Middle East which was largely premised on an abiding antagonism between the two countries.

Tunis, Tunisia--More than 1,000 Africans trying to reach Europe have been rescued in a single night off Tunisia, the coast guard said Friday, after a wave of violence against black migrants. Last month President Kais Saied ordered officials in the North African country to take "urgent measures" to tackle irregular migration,...

Negotiations overseen in Switzerland by the UN and the International Committee of the Red Cross will see Yemen's warring parties holding talks in Geneva starting Saturday to discuss a prisoner exchange, according to rebels and government officials. Hostilities have largely stopped since a UN-brokered ceasefire took effect in April last...

Erdogan banned music from his campaign as he signed a decree on national television that kics off campaigning for what is widely seen as Turkey's most consequential vote of its pos-Ottoman history.

Riyadh cut ties with Tehran after Iranian protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in the Islamic republic in 2016 following the Saudi execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. The two countries also agreed to activate the security cooperation agreement signed in 2001.

A statement from NATO said that "participants welcomed the progress that has been made" on a three-way deal struck last year aimed at satisfying Turkey's complaints. The latest meeting came after Ankara had earlier suspended negotiations in outrage at protests in January that included the burning of the Koran outside...

Dubai, UAE -- Bahrain has revoked visas for two members of Human Rights Watch who planned to attend this week's Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly in the Gulf state, the activist group said on Friday. Visas that were issued for two members of the rights group on January 30 were cancelled on...

The 69-year-old has weathered widespread protests over his zero-Covid policy and the deaths of countless people after its abandonment. But those issues have been avoided at this week's National People's Congress (NPC), a carefully choreographed event that is also set to appoint Xi ally Li Qiang as the new premier.

The 47-year-old ship has not been serviced since Yemen's devastating civil war broke out in 2015 and was left abandoned off the rebel-held port of Hodeida, a critical gateway for shipments into the country heavily dependent on emergency foreign aid. UN officials have voiced fears that the ship would crumble,...

Austin's talks with his hosts were centred on the changing geopolitics of the region, which is currently roiled by rising threat from Iran and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

DOHA, QATAR - Just US$1.4 billion in new loans and grants were promised at a UN summit devoted to the world's poorest nations where UN leader Antonio Guterres had appealed for massive aid, officials said Thursday. A top UN envoy warned at the end of the five-day Least Developed Countries meeting...

The councils were seen as a key democratic gain after the 2011 revolt that sparked the Arab Spring. Saied sacked the government in a 2021 power grab, and has since scrapped the post-revolution constitution, neutered parliament and seized far-reaching executive powers.

A planned mass rally in Tel Aviv by Israeli protesters opposed to the government's controversial legal reform plans forced an 11th-hour change of venue for Lloyd Austin's talks, throwing an international spotlight on Israel's domestic divisions.

The pushback was "predictable", said Khaled al-Montasser, a professor of international relations at the University of Tripoli, as elections would see members of both chambers potentially lose their seats and privileges. Despite the rivalry between them, both view the UN initiative as "interference in their sovereign decision-making power and an...

Sham Sheikh Mohammed, who suffered severe crush injuries in a 40-hour ordeal under the rubble, has not yet been told that both her mother and sister died in the February 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Syria and Turkey. Sham's story captivated Syrians and others around the...

Decades of unsustainable policies and fundamental neglect, capture of state resources by elites, alleged corruption, and vested interests cripple the power sector in Lebanon.

Reacting to howls of condemnation his controversial comments have ignited, Tunisia's President Kais Saied on Wednesday denied racism. Last month, the president ordered officials to take "urgent measures" to tackle irregular migration, claiming that a "criminal plot" was underway to change Tunisia's demographic makeup.

Dubai, UAE – French President Emmanuel Macron faced embarrassing moments during a joint press conference with the Congolese President Felix Kshisekedi who called for an end to “paternalistic gaze” with which developments in Africa are gauged by the West. Tshisekedi said that what needs to change in Congo’s relations with...

A broad restructuring document announced by China's cabinet on Tuesday intends to focus the Ministry of Science and Technology's resources on coordinating "scientific and technological achievements." The plan also replaces China's existing banking and insurance regulator with a new body incorporating some functions from its central bank and securities watchdog,...

The Palestinian health ministry said six men had been killed, one aged 49 and the rest in their 20s, in clashes that the army said included soldiers launching shoulder-fired rockets amid ferocious gunfire. On Tuesday, Jordan foreign ministry spokesman Sinan Majali condemned what he called Israeli "aggression", warning it "will...

As relations thaw after more than a decade of isolation, Saudi Arabia has suggested that closer cooperation with Syria may open the road for its admission back into the Arab League, albeit it is still too early to debate this option. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al...

BEIRUT, LEBANON - Lawmakers attending an inter-parliament gathering in Bahrain's capital this week should seize the "opportunity" to address the Gulf state's "dismal rights record", rights groups have said. Parliamentarians from around the world are planning to attend this year’s Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the oldest and largest organization of parliaments in...

Two witnesses said rockets had been fired at the building housing a group of militants, and reported gunfire in the streets of the northern West Bank camp, the latest in a string of fatal military operations in the territory. The raid comes amid a surge in violence in the Israeli-Palestinian...

The World Bank estimated last week that the devastating quake, which flattened entire cities, had caused damage worth more than $34 billion in Turkey, with recovery likely to double that sum. But Louisa Vinton of the UN Development Program said the Turkish government had calculated far higher damage.

Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa faced violence and many were made homeless since Saied ordered "urgent measures" against them. In response, World Bank defers a key board meeting on Tunisia.

MAARET MASRIN, SYRIA - Syrian medics launched Tuesday the first cholera vaccination campaign in the rebel-held northwest since a deadly outbreak began last year, amid increased fears of contagion after last month's devastating earthquake. Health workers were going door to door to inoculate people in homes and displacement camps in the...

Scores of Iranian schools have been hit by poisonings since late November, with pupils suffering symptoms ranging from shortness of breath to nausea and vertigo after reporting "unpleasant" odors on school premises. Some have been treated in hospital.

Israeli warplanes struck Aleppo airport before dawn, causing significant damage that halted flights to and from Syria's war- and quake-battered second city, the defense ministry said. The airport has been a major conduit for aid flights since a February 6 earthquake devastated southeastern Turkey and Syria, a transport ministry official...

In a statement, HESC said the project has entered its commercial demonstration phase with money from Japan's Green Innovation Fund, which will be used to design and build facilities to liquefy and ship hydrogen from Australia's Victoria to Japan. The project aims to produce and liquefy hydrogen from a type...

A major overhaul of the sector - from production to distribution to consumption - could reduce those emissions by more than half even as global population increases, they reported in Nature Climate Change. The global food system accounts for about 15 percent of current warming levels, but only a third...

Doha, Qatar-- Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdul Aziz Al Thani has resigned from his job, according to Qatar News Agency. And in the wake of the resignation, the country's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani has appointed Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani in...

Iraq has recently hosted a raft of foreign officials, including the Iranian, Russian and Saudi foreign ministers and UN chief Antonio Guterres. Since US-led coalition troops ousted Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime, Iraq's Shiite majority has led Iraq under a confessional power-sharing system. Successive governments have forged close ties with Iraq's...

Analysts view the opposition's failure to put aside their differences just two months before the vote as one of the main factors working in Erdogan's favour. Erdogan's public approval plunged after he unleashed an unusual economic experiment in late 2021 that tried to fight inflation by drastically cutting interest rates.

Lebanon opened its probe following a request for assistance from Switzerland's public prosecutor probing more than $300 million in fund movements by Riad Salameh and his brother. Last month, Swiss media reported that 12 banks in the European country had received a large part of the money Salameh is alleged...

Iran's Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said those behind the poisoning of schoolgirls in recent months should face "severe punishment", according to his website. In total, several hundred cases of gas poisoning have been reported in more than 52 schools across Iran since the end of November, according to an...

UNESCO chief Audrey Azoulay was to visit reconstruction projects and meet top officials including Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and President Abdel Latif Rachid. Years of war and insurgency have taken a heavy toll on Iraq's many Mesopotamian, Islamic and Christian treasures including six UNESCO World Heritage sites.

The university ban is one of several restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 and has sparked global outrage -- including across the Muslim world. The international community has made the right to education for women a sticking point in negotiations over aid...

Japan and the United States immediately welcomed the announcement, but victims' groups said it fell far short of their demand for a full apology from Tokyo and direct compensation from the Japanese companies involved. Seoul-Tokyo ties have long been strained over Tokyo's brutal 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean peninsula,...