Category Archives: Middle East and North Africa

Thousands march in Algeria after controversial election result

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Ruling party hoped election of Abdelmadjid Tebboune as president would end months of instability

Huge crowds have massed in Algeria’s capital to protest against the election of a former loyalist of the deposed leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika as president in a widely boycotted poll.

Demonstrators who flooded central Algiers on Friday vowed to keep up their campaign for the total dismantling of the political establishment following Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s victory in Thursday’s election.

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Mass boycott and police clashes as Algeria holds disputed election

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Low turnout reflects widespread disaffection with election pitting regime loyalists against each other

An opposition call for a mass boycott of presidential elections in Algeria appeared to have succeeded on Thursday, as polls shut after a day marked by mass demonstrations, police clashes and a wave of arrests.

The turnout in the election appeared to be around 20% – a victory for the country’s pro-democracy protest movement, which has derided the vote as a sham.

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Saudi Aramco touches $2tn in value on second day of trading

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World’s biggest listed company briefly reaches valuation sought by Saudi ruler

Saudi Aramco has touched a market value of $2tn a day after the Saudi state-backed oil company made its stock market debut.

The shares rose almost 10% at the open on the second day of trade on Riyadh’s Tadawul stock exchange, lifting the company’s market value briefly to $2tn, before giving up some of their gains.

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Sudan will never prosper while it is on the US terrorism blacklist

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If Washington wants to be on the right side of history, it must open the way for Sudan to receive economic support

Over the past year, the Sudanese people have staged a near miraculous revolution, overthrowing the 30-year dictatorship of President Omar al-Bashir.

Following mediation led by the African Union and Ethiopia, a transitional government consisting of civilians and military generals is headed by Abdalla Hamdok, a veteran economist untainted by the decades of corruption and misrule. It is the best compromise: the army, and especially the paramilitary Rapid Support Force, are simply too powerful to be removed from politics in one fell swoop.

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Israel heads for unprecedented third election in a year as stalemate continues

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Israel’s parliament votes on Wednesday to dissolve itself in a fresh bid to break political deadlock

Israel is set to hold a third round of elections within 12 months, after a deadline to form a government passed with no politician able to bring together the disparate parties.

A time limit to forge a majority coalition in the country’s parliament, the Knesset, expired at midnight on Wednesday, automatically triggering a fresh national ballot.

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Saudi Aramco becomes most valuable listed company in history

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Investor demand pushes oil giant’s market value to $1.9tn on first day of trade in Riyadh

Saudi Aramco has secured its position as the most valuable listed company in history after investor appetite for the world’s biggest fossil fuel producer pushed its market value to $1.9tn (£1.4tn) on its first day of trade.

Shares in the Saudi state-backed oil company defied Aramco’s critics by climbing nearly $200bn above the $1.7tn valuation set before its market debut on Riyadh’s stock exchange.

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Birth of boy sparks renewed calls to rescue Australians in Syria’s squalid al-Hawl camp

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Brutal winter, poor healthcare and limited food raises fears for welfare of infant, born to Sydney woman Rayan Hamdoush

An Australian woman has given birth to a baby boy in the al-Hawl camp in Syria, prompting revived calls for Australia to rescue 67 nationals still held in the camp.

Rayan Hamdoush, 24, from western Sydney, was pregnant when she entered al-Hawl. She gave birth to the boy on 30 November. The boy’s father, Samer Hajj Obeid, also from Sydney, is missing.

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Qatar stadium deaths: the dark side of the glittering venue hosting Liverpool

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Premier League leaders urged to join fight for better working conditions as they prepare for Fifa Club World Cup match

As Liverpool fans stream into Qatar to watch the Fifa Club World Cup next week, it will be easy to forget the thousands of workers from the poorest countries in the region who have toiled for years to construct its glittering buildings.

When they take their seats at the Khalifa International Stadium, where Liverpool will play their semi-final match, they may not realise that scores of workers who refurbished the stadium were housed in filthy, overcrowded accommodation with an ever-present stench of raw sewage.

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Protest movement likely to shun Algeria’s controversial election

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Opposition says this week’s poll cannot be seen as free or fair with ruling elite still in power

Millions of Algerians are to vote for a new president in a controversial poll likely to be shunned by the country’s mass protest movement, paving the way for future instability.

The Hirak opposition movement, which emerged this year from weekly demonstrations against the former French colony’s political establishment, has said the poll cannot be considered free or fair while the ruling elite, including the military, stay in power.

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Libya arms embargo being systematically violated by UN states

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Jordan, Turkey and UAE singled out for ‘routinely and blatantly’ supplying weapons

UN member states have systematically violated a Libyan arms embargo, according to a long-awaited UN report due to be published on Monday that will identify Jordan, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates as the main culprits.

The report is expected to say these three countries “routinely and sometimes blatantly supplied weapons with little effort to disguise the source”. It is also likely to link the UAE to a bombing of a detention centre that has been described as a war crime.

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More than a million viewers paid to watch Joshua regain titles

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Eddie Hearn, the boxer’s promoter, said fight ‘almost certainly’ broke UK pay-per-view record

Criticism of Anthony Joshua for boxing in Saudi Arabia does not appear to have affected his popularity with the British public, with more than a million people paying at least £24.95 to watch the heavyweight regain his world titles on Saturday – a figure that is likely to be a UK record.

Joshua’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, said: “We are waiting on the final number but it has almost certainly broken the UK pay-per-view record.”

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Trump: if Jared Kushner can’t achieve peace in Middle East, ‘it can’t be done’

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President also told Israeli American Council summit some Jewish people in the US don’t love Israel enough and attacked Ilhan Omar

If Jared Kushner cannot achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Donald Trump claimed on Saturday, “it can’t be done”.

The president also told the Israeli American Council national summit some Jewish people in America don’t love Israel enough, a remark some said was antisemitic, and attacked the Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar for what he called her “despicable rhetoric” about Israel.

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Iran unveils ‘budget to resist US sanctions’ with help from $5bn Russian loan

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President Rouhani claims Iran can manage, but IMF hints oil prices need to be triple current levels to balance budget

Iran’s president has presented a draft state budget of about $39bn (£30bn) to parliament, saying it was designed to resist US sanctions by limiting dependence on oil exports.

Officials have not given figures for the oil price and export volumes used in the calculations, although the International Monetary Fund has indicated Iran would need oil prices to be triple current levels to balance its budget as its crude exports have plunged.

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Josep Borrell: can EU’s new diplomat- in-chief strengthen bloc’s global standing?

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The veteran Spanish socialist has a reputation for plain speaking, and a brief to build a more assertive EU

It has been called Europe’s “valley of tears”. But it isn’t in National Geographic; rather it is the monthly pilgrimage of the European Union’s 28 foreign ministers to Brussels or Luxembourg to discuss the woes of the world.

And the man who coined the phrase, Josep Borrell, a socialist veteran of Spanish politics, was not paying a compliment. He described the EU foreign affairs council as “more a valley of tears than a centre of decision-making” because “it’s where all the open sores of humanity come. They tell us their sufferings, we express our condolences and concern … but no capacity for action comes out of it and we just move on to the next one.”

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The UN’s fight for Palestinian refugees goes on – but its key agency needs help

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From Israel’s hostility to Trump’s withdrawal of US funding, the UNRWA faces unprecedented challenges. Timely financial and diplomatic support is key

Today, on the 70th anniversary of its founding, the UN Relief and Works Agency, the UN’s main refugee agency serving Palestinians, is facing unprecedented challenges.

It has become a key battleground in Donald Trump’s war against multilateralism and his unilateral attempts to redefine the Middle East peace process along a track proposed by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Defiant protesters back in Baghdad square within an hour of slaughter

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Demonstrators grow ever more determined to force real political change in Iraq despite a bloody crackdown which left over 20 dead

The gunshots emptied protesters from Baghdad’s Khilani square in minutes, but as nearby streets filled with the crush of people running for their lives, two men stayed on, waving a vast Shia banner in defiance of the bloodshed around them.

The pair must have known they were in the gunmen’s crosshairs, and soon one of them crumpled, hit by a bullet. But their determination to continue was a powerful message to authorities and militias trying to crush Iraq’s popular uprising by force.

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US citizen Xiyue Wang released from Iranian jail in prisoner swap

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Chinese-born Princeton student, sentenced to 10 years in prison, exchanged for Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani

A Chinese-born US citizen sentenced to 10 years in prison in Iran on spying charges has been released as part of a prisoner swap.

Related: Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe makes tearful appeal to be released from Iran jail

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Over a dozen killed in Baghdad when gunmen open fire on protesters

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Attack follows mass stabbings in Tahrir Square, a focus of the anti-government movement

At least 14 people were killed and more than 40 others wounded when gunmen in cars opened fire on a protest camp in Baghdad, sending people running for cover in nearby mosques. Three of the victims were police officers.

The attacks on Friday came a day after a string of suspicious stabbing incidents left at least 13 wounded in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the centre of Iraq’s leaderless protest movement.

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The Cave review – horror and hope in a Syrian hospital battered by war

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This powerful, immensely moving documentary follows the courageous medical staff who must treat injured children as bombs fall around them

Feras Fayyad, the young Syrian documentary-maker who filmed Last Men in Aleppo (and was himself imprisoned and tortured by Bashar al-Assad’s regime), returns with a chilling, shaming film made over two years inside a Syrian hospital in Ghouta, the city besieged by the Syrian government for five years until 2018.

If there is a chink of hope here it’s Amani Ballour, the hospital’s manager, a paediatrician in her late 20s. “I know this life is tough. But it’s honest,” she says. Her deep sense of purpose is humbling – it carries her through hellish days treating dozens of bloodied and badly injured children. Her gentleness with patients is desperately moving, too.

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Saudi Aramco to be world’s most valuable firm after IPO next week

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Oversubscribed listing in Riyadh of 1.5% stake in state oil company will value it at $1.7tn

Saudi Aramco is poised to achieve the biggest initial public offering in history next week by raising $25.7bn for the Saudi state in its market debut.

The state-owned oil business will emerge as the world’s most valuable listed company after reportedly valuing its shares at 32 riyals ($8.53) apiece before its float on Riyadh’s stock exchange next week.

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