Kais Saied will technically head administration after paring back powers of PM’s office
Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, has appointed a new government by decree, 11 weeks after firing the last one in a power grab, as the country faces acute economic and political crises.
State television broadcast a swearing-in ceremony of the cabinet headed by Najla Bouden, the north African country’s first female prime minister.
Continue reading...Autumn Assembly is the highest and most important Yazidi holiday. It takes place in the holy city of Lalish, which is believed to be the place where creation began and where the seat of God descended to rule the earth. It also houses the tombs of Sheikh Adi and other holy figures. The town is considered so sacred that you are not allowed to enter while wearing shoes, especially during the assembly
Continue reading...Disillusioned youth and middle classes stay home rather than vote for system they believe has failed
Iraqis have turned out in low numbers in a national election, with many boycotting a poll that people feared could reinforce a political system that had failed them.
Nationwide turnout at the sixth ballot since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was thought to be as low as 25%, with the country’s disillusioned youth and middle classes largely staying home.
Continue reading...Announcement comes amid signs Tehran may be open to resuming stalled talks on 2015 nuclear deal
Iran has amassed more than 120kg of 20% enriched uranium, well above the level agreed to in the 2015 deal with world powers, the head of the country’s atomic energy agency has told state television.
“We have passed 120 kilograms,” said Mohammad Eslami, head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation. “We have more than that figure. Our people know well that [western powers] were meant to give us the enriched fuel at 20% to use in the Tehran reactor, but they haven’t done so.
Continue reading...First president after 1979 Islamic revolution clashed with clerics and fled to exile in France a year later
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who became Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution before fleeing into exile in France, died on Saturday aged 88.
He died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris following a long illness, his wife and children said on Bani-Sadr’s official website.
Continue reading...Saud al-Qahtani, aide to Mohammed bin Salman, hailed as patriot on pro-government social media
Three years after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi royal court adviser accused of directing the murder is being quietly reintroduced by pro-government influencers as a patriotic figure who has served his country well.
Social media accounts that back the Saudi leadership have in recent months been posting tributes to Saud al-Qahtani, a chief aide to crown prince and Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in a move that is seen as marking his gradual return to the seat of Saudi power. Qahtani vanished from public view in the aftermath of the gruesome killing in Istanbul that shocked the world and almost derailed his boss’s path to the throne.
Continue reading...We shouldn’t single out football fans: the country has long since made its peace with the power of capital, whatever its origins
Football, no longer merely the national game, is England’s political theatre. The way in which the spasm of fan protest stopped the European Super League in its tracks in April, and which the prime minister erroneously claimed as his own victory, spoke to both a residual – if often dormant – public sense of justice and communitarianism, and the shamelessness of our snake-skinned political conversation. The open conflict between the England men’s team, the Conservative government and a section of the England fanbase over taking the knee at Euro 2020 was a battle over who gets to define the terms of our debate over structural racism. Now, the long anticipated sale of Newcastle United to Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund points to England’s practically and morally diminished place in the world, and the roads that have taken us there.
The crown prince of Saudi Arabia is not the first politician to take an interest in Newcastle United. In the early 1990s, Tony Blair, then leader of the opposition, was busy burnishing his local credentials by declaring his fidelity to the team, decrying Andy Cole’s transfer to Manchester United in the Sun, and playing keepy-uppy with Kevin Keegan. Like Blair, Newcastle United were the coming thing. After four decades without a trophy, but now under the new ownership of Sir John Hall, both a Thatcherite property developer and an advocate for regional government and regeneration in the north-east, Keegan’s Newcastle were challenging for the Premiership title and playing fabulous football to raging full houses. In 1996 Alan Shearer arrived, on a then recored transfer fee, and declared to a delirious crowd that he was still “the son of a sheet-metal worker”. One could have been forgiven for thinking that, after the hammer blows of 17 years of Thatcherism, there was hope for an English working class and regional revival.
David Goldblatt is the author of The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football and The Game of Our Lives
Continue reading...Raids by the security forces leave at least one man dead, as official observers decry ‘inhumane’ detention conditions
More than 5,000 refugees and migrants have been arrested by the Libyan authorities in the past week with some allegedly subjected to severe physical and sexual violence, before being held in increasingly “inhumane conditions” in detention centres in Tripoli.
Many of those arrested escaped wars or dictatorships across Africa, and have already undergone years of detention. They were intercepted at sea trying to reach Europe by the EU-supported Libyan coastguard.
Continue reading...Defeat for western states as Bahrain, Russia and other nations push through vote to shut down investigations
Bahrain, Russia and other members of the UN human rights council have pushed through a vote to shut down the body’s war crimes investigations in Yemen, in a stinging defeat for western states who sought to keep the mission going.
Members narrowly voted to reject a resolution led by the Netherlands to give the independent investigators another two years to monitor atrocities in Yemen’s conflict.
Continue reading...Hans Grundberg must recognise more than two factions involved in conflict, says pro-independence group
The new UN special envoy to Yemen has been urged to broaden negotiations to end the country’s seven-year civil war and include the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council and other factions.
Speaking to the Guardian from Aden, the head of the STC foreign affairs directorate, Mohammed al-Ghaithi, said the UN must recognise that outdated security council resolutions were restricting their efforts.
Continue reading...Analysis: Blair is an adviser to NSO Group, whose Pegasus spyware was found to have been used in phone hack
The finding by a senior judge that NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware was used by the ruler of Dubai to hack the phone of his ex-wife and five of her associates, all resident in England, raises fresh questions about Cherie Blair’s involvement with the company.
NSO has previously said that its malware, which infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones, is only intended for use by its government clients against criminals and terrorists.
Continue reading...Sheikh Mohammed used spyware on Princess Haya and five associates in unlawful abuse of power, judge rules
The ruler of Dubai hacked the phone of his ex-wife Princess Haya using NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus spyware in an unlawful abuse of power and trust, a senior high court judge has ruled.
The president of the family division found that agents acting on behalf of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also prime minister of the United Arab Emirates, a close Gulf ally of Britain, hacked Haya and five of her associates while the couple were locked in court proceedings in London concerning the welfare of their two children.
Continue reading...Academic’s appointment marks historic moment for Arab world but comes amid political and economic crisis, with some fearing she will be Kais Saied’s pawn
Sara Medini, political analyst at the Tunisian feminist organisation Aswat Nissa, was in a meeting at work last week when she happened to glance at a news alert on her phone. What she saw left her at first flabbergasted, then delighted.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought I had misread it,” she said. “I told my colleagues: ‘He’s appointed a woman! He’s appointed a woman!’
Continue reading...Israel prime minister tells Knesset of ‘bold’ mission concerned with fate of missing navigator Lt Col Ron Arad
The Israeli spy agency, the Mossad, launched a complex intelligence operation last month to find information on the whereabouts and fate of an Israeli airman who was shot down over southern Lebanon in 1986.
The existence of the operation to find Lt Col Ron Arad, a navigator on an Israeli jet whose plane went down during a bombing raid, was confirmed by the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who told the country’s parliament on Monday that he could share no more details of the “courageous mission”.
Continue reading...Nicosia says an armed individual was arrested after crossing from Turkish-controlled north
Israel has accused Iran of orchestrating an attempted attack against Israelis in Cyprus after police on the Mediterranean island said an armed individual had been arrested.
“This was a terrorist incident directed by Iran against Israeli businesspeople living in Cyprus,” Matan Sidi, spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, said in a statement.
Continue reading...A cyclone that made landfall in Oman on Sunday has killed at least 13 people, and others are missing as the storm moved further inland and weakened. Omani state television broadcast images of flooded roadways and valleys as the storm churned deeper into the sultanate, its outer edges reaching the neighbouring United Arab Emirates
Continue reading...Fact-finding mission says migrants and detainees particularly exposed to violations since civil war
War crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture, enslavement, extrajudicial killings and rape have been committed in Libya since 2016, a United Nations investigation has found.
The independent fact-finding mission on Libya, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, said migrants and detainees were particularly exposed to violations that have occurred since the country was plunged into a state of instability and civil war.
Continue reading...Tensions rise as Algiers imposes airspace ban in latest response to visa dispute and Macron criticism
The diplomatic discord between Algeria and France has deepened after Algiers banned French military planes from its airspace, its latest response to a row over visas and critical comments from President Emmanuel Macron.
France’s jets regularly fly over the former French colony to reach the Sahel region of western Africa, where its soldiers are helping to battle jihadist insurgents as part of its Operation Barkhane.
Continue reading...President accused of chasing rightwing votes by making sudden, tough gestures on immigration
The Algerian foreign ministry has summoned the French ambassador for talks in “formal protest” against France’s decision to sharply reduce the number of visas granted to Algerian nationals, as opposition parties in Paris accused Emmanuel Macron of using the row to court rightwing voters.
The French government announced this week that it would substantially cut the number of visas granted to people from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, three north African countries which were all part of France’s former colonial empire and where many people have strong family ties in France.
Continue reading...Political unknown to form government with limited powers while president Kais Saied rules by decree
Tunisia’s president named geologist Najla Bouden as the country’s first ever female prime minister-designate on Wednesday, to form a government with limited executive clout after the president seized wide-ranging powers two months ago.
Bouden, a university lecturer and political unknown, will take office after President Kais Saied on 25 July sacked the government of Hichem Mechichi, suspended parliament, lifted MPs’ immunity and took over the judiciary.
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