Tripoli sees biggest rallies in years on weekend of demonstrations over political deadlock and living conditions
The UN secretary general, António Guterres, has appealed for calm as street demonstrations spread across Libya in protest over power cuts and the failure to hold national elections.
Talks between the Libyan factions in Geneva convened by the UN special adviser Stephanie Williams made progress last week but without agreement on a constitution for the elections.
Continue reading...Court invitation to clarify prince’s status comes as president faces criticism for ditching promise to turn Saudi Arabia into a ‘pariah’
A US judge has asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, should be granted sovereign immunity in a civil case brought against him in the US by Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was killed by Saudi agents in 2018.
John Bates, a district court judge, gave the US government until 1 August to declare its interests in the civil case or give the court notice that it has no view on the matter.
Continue reading...Dispute threatens to derail apparent breakthrough in standoff over investigation into Al Jazeera reporter’s death
Israel has said it will conduct forensic tests on the bullet that killed the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, a day after Palestinian officials handed over the evidence to a US security coordinator for examination on what they said was the condition that Israel would not be involved.
The testing will be carried out by Israeli investigators in the presence of US observers, the Israeli military spokesperson Brig-Gen Ran Kochav told Army Radio on Sunday.
Continue reading...Palestinian Authority hands over bullet in move to end standoff with Israel over investigation
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday said it has given the bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh to American forensic experts, taking a step toward resolving a standoff with Israel over the investigation into her death.
Abu Aqleh, a veteran correspondent who was well known throughout the Arab world, was fatally shot while covering an Israeli military raid on 11 May in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Continue reading...Demonstrators storm eastern city’s legislature over political deadlock and deteriorating living conditions
Protesters have stormed Libya’s parliament in the eastern city of Tobruk and set parts of it ablaze, venting their anger at deteriorating living conditions and months of political deadlock.
Black smoke billowed as men burned tyres and torched cars during the incident on Friday after a protester smashed through the compound’s gate with a bulldozer and others attacked the walls with construction tools, local media reported.
Continue reading...Rescue work carried out after 12 also injured in magnitude-6.1 quake followed by two others and more than dozen aftershocks
At least five people were killed by a magnitude-6.1 earthquake in southern Iran early on Saturday, state media reported, with the area also hit by two later strong quakes of up to 6.3 magnitude.
“Five people have died in the earthquake … and so far 12 are hospitalised,” Mehrdad Hassanzadeh, the head of emergency management in Hormozgan province on Iran’s Gulf coast, told state TV.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch calls for donors to cut off funding to security forces and urges international court to investigate
Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group has said.
In its report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the international criminal court to investigate.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Pether, who has been imprisoned for 14 months in Baghdad, has become ‘gravely ill’ according to his family
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has raised the case of jailed engineer Robert Pether with the Iraqi leader, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as the Australian’s family warns he has become “gravely ill” and is rapidly deteriorating in his Baghdadi jail cell.
Pether has now been imprisoned for more than 14 months following a commercial dispute between his engineering firm and Iraq’s central bank, which had hired Pether’s company to help build its new Baghdad headquarters. Pether’s family say he is innocent and the trial was unfair and compromised.
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Continue reading...Talks to save 2015 agreement on brink of collapse as Tehran is also accused of testing missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons
Iran has been accused of making “maximalist demands” in the latest unsuccessful round of talks on reviving the nuclear non-proliferation deal at a grave session of the UN security council in which it was widely acknowledged that the talks – and the whole 2015 deal – were on the brink of collapse.
Iranian and US officials, with the EU acting as mediators, held two days of talks in Doha in a bid to break a months-long impasse, but no progress was made on Iran’s central demand that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps be removed from US sanctions and its list of foreign terrorist organisations.
Continue reading...Human rights groups say there have been no autopsies or identification of the 23 people killed trying to cross into Spain
Seconds after Mohamed stepped on to Spanish soil, he turned around to see how his friends had fared along the metres-high chain link fence that slices off the Spanish enclave of Melilla from Morocco.
“It was horrible,” said the 20-year-old from Sudan. “It was a bloodbath; many of them appeared dead and many were injured.”
Continue reading...Analysis: deal between Biden and Erdoğan is sealed in Madrid after Nordic countries vow to control support for Kurdish terrorism
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, immediately started to reap the rewards for lifting the block on allowing Sweden and Finland to join Nato when the Biden administration said it backed the potential sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.
Speaking at a briefing call on Wednesday, Celeste Wallander, the assistant secretary for defence for international security affairs at the Pentagon, told reporters that strong Turkish defence capabilities would reinforce Nato’s defences.
Continue reading...Move follows ice-cream brand’s decision to stop selling in Palestinian territories as it was ‘inconsistent’ with its values
Unilever has sold off its Ben & Jerry’s business in Israel in an attempt to extricate itself from a row over sales of the ice-cream in settlements in the West Bank.
Ben & Jerry’s independent board announced last summer that the brand would no longer sell its products in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying to do so was “inconsistent with our values”.
Continue reading...New rules limiting ability of foreigners to enter occupied territory are postponed before US president’s Middle East visit
Israel has delayed the implementation of strict rules limiting the ability of foreigners to enter and stay in the occupied West Bank, in what is believed to be a gesture to Joe Biden before the US president’s visit to the Middle East next month.
A statement from the high court on Wednesday said the new rules would be shelved until early September, as a decision had not yet been made regarding objections to the proposed policy.
Continue reading...Climate activists say plight of jailed Alaa Abd El Fattah shows protesters’ voices will be ignored at Sharm el-Sheikh summit
Five months before a pivotal UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, one of Egypt’s most prominent political prisoners remains behind bars. Now on his 89th day of a hunger strike, Alaa Abd El Fattah is subsisting on just a hundred calories a day, normally in the form of skimmed milk or a spoonful of honey in his tea.
Abd El Fattah, a figurehead of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, has spent most of the past decade in prison. First jailed for organising demonstrations against a law that in effect banned protest altogether, he was re-arrested in 2019 during anti-government protests in which he had no involvement, and last year was sentenced to a further five years in a maximum security prison on charges of “spreading false news undermining national security”, for comments about torture on social media.
Continue reading...Poll set for October after collapse of short-lived coalition that ousted Benjamin Netanyahu from office
Israel is set for its fifth election in less than four years after the approval of a bill to dissolve parliament, following the collapse of a short-lived coalition government that banded together to oust the longtime prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu from office.
Members of the Knesset voted unanimously on Tuesday in favour of the bill, with a deadline of midnight on Wednesday for it to be finalised as law.
Continue reading...Many victims at detention facility for families of Islamic State fighters have been women, top official says
More than 100 people, including many women, have been murdered in a Syria’s al-Hawl detention camp in 18 months, according to the UN.
The camp is becoming increasingly unsafe and child detainees are being condemned to a life with no future, said Imran Riza, the UN resident coordinator in Syria, who called on countries to repatriate their citizens from the sprawling facility.
Continue reading...Hisham al-Sayed seen lying in bed wearing a mask, with what appears to be an oxygen canister next to him
Gaza’s Hamas rulers have released a video of a captive Israeli citizen held incommunicado since 2015, showing the man lying in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask.
It was the first image of Hisham al-Sayed to be released since he wandered across the frontier from southern Israel into Gaza. Its release came a day after Hamas said the condition of one of the Israelis it was holding captive had deteriorated.
Continue reading...New rules will remove abortion approval committees and grant access to abortion pills at local health clinics
Israel has eased its regulations on abortion access, in what the health minister said was a response to last week’s “sad” US supreme court ruling overturning Roe v Wade.
The new rules, approved by a parliamentary committee, grant women access to abortion pills through the country’s universal health system and remove a longstanding requirement that women appear physically before a special committee before they are permitted to terminate a pregnancy.
Continue reading...Leak at port of Aqaba happened after tank filled with gas fell while being transported, says state news agency
Thirteen people have died and 251 have been injured in a toxic gas leak from a storage tank at Jordan’s Aqaba port, state television reported, as authorities called on residents to shut windows and stay indoors.
The leak on Monday came after a cable lifting a tank filled with 25 tonnes of chlorine snapped, sending the container crashing down.
Continue reading...Concern at apparent plan to bury victims without investigating cause of death or trying to identify them
There are growing calls for an investigation into the deaths of up to 37 people who died trying to scale a fence to enter Melilla, Spain’s enclave in north Africa.
About 2,000 people stormed the heavily fortified border between the Moroccan region of Nador and the Spanish enclave on Friday. The Moroccan authorities say 23 people died and 140 police were injured during the attempt, while several NGOs say the number of dead is 37.
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