Services to Egyptian capital halted for seven days to allow for security review, says airline
British Airways has suspended all flights to Cairo for seven days as a security precaution.
The airline made the surprise announcement last night that all flights into the Egyptian capital were halted.
Continue reading...Video released by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shows speedboats pulling up alongside a seized British-flagged oil tanker. Troops wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns rappelled onto the Stena Impero’s deck from a helicopter. The ship, with its 23-strong crew, has been taken to Bandar Abbas, one of the country’s main military ports
Continue reading...With the seizure of a supertanker off Gibraltar, distracted UK government was set up by John Bolton as collateral damage
John Bolton, White House national security adviser and notorious Iraq-era hawk, is a man on a mission. Given broad latitude over policy by Donald Trump, he is widely held to be driving the US confrontation with Iran. And in his passionate bid to tame Tehran, Bolton cares little who gets hurt – even if collateral damage includes a close ally such as Britain.
So when Bolton heard British Royal Marines had seized an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar on America’s Independence Day, his joy was unconfined. “Excellent news: UK has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of EU sanctions,” he exulted on Twitter.
Continue reading...Iranian state media have released footage of the seized oil tanker Stena Impero detained in the strait of Hormuz on Friday, marking a dramatic escalation in the worsening standoff in the Gulf. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have taken the British-flagged ship into port with its 23-strong crew, and Iranian officials claimed it had infringed maritime regulations
Continue reading...For a reputed “strongman”, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seems unusually nervous these days. A bombastic speech last week marking the third anniversary of a failed military putsch could not conceal his insecurity. He says he is using his sweeping powers as executive president to build a “new Turkey”. But it appears the old one is tiring of him fast.
“The 15th of July was an attempt to subject our nation to slavery,” Erdoğan declared. “But as much as we will never stop protecting our freedom and our future, those who lay traps for us will never cease their efforts.” It was a typical pitch, blending nationalism with scare stories of secret foes, foreign and domestic.
Continue reading...Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt says Britain’s response will be ‘considered but robust’ if UK-flagged tanker is not released
The British government has warned that Iran is choosing “a dangerous path of illegal and destabilising behaviour” and advised UK ships to avoid the strait of Hormuz after Iran seized a British-flagged tanker as the crisis in the Gulf escalates.
The foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said on Saturday morning that Britain’s response would be “considered but robust” if the British-flagged Stena Impero was not released, although he had earlier said the government was not contemplating military action.
Continue reading...The kingdom has long been a man’s world, where women have the legal status of children. Do the latest reforms represent progress – or a PR exercise?
At the Luna food factory on the south-east outskirts of Jeddah, Mashael Elghamdi sits at her computer in an artfully ripped AC/DC T-shirt and jeans. The faint whirr of machines processing cans of beans, cream and evaporated milk can be heard over the sound of eight women typing and sometimes laughing. A screensaver of a smiling Cameron Diaz gazes out from one corner of the room. This is an all-female office. And because there is no need for the full-length abayas women are legally required to wear when interacting with men at work or in public, it is a riot of colour.
On the factory floor below, women in custom-made overalls on an all-female production line apply labels to cans. “All the women you see here do everything themselves,” says supervisor Fatima Albasisi, who oversees 90 workers. A staircase and a corridor separate the female factory workers from their male counterparts, while the men-only offices are in a different building. “If there’s a problem with the machines, they can fix it,” Albasisi adds. “If I could, I’d have a factory entirely run by women, no men at all. In my experience, women show up to work on time and make fewer mistakes.”
Continue reading...Finsbury Park and Trafalgar Square were deluged with more than 1,000 Algeria supporters after their national football team won the Africa Cup of Nations on Friday night
Continue reading...‘King Bibi’ beats David Ben-Gurion’s record, but with threatening clouds on the horizon
Benjamin Netanyahu has become Israel‘s longest-serving prime minister, snatching the title from the country’s founding father and first leader, David Ben-Gurion.
As of Saturday, the man referred to as King Bibi by both those who adore and detest him, has spent 4,867 days – more than 13 years – in office.
Continue reading...Grace 1 was impounded over claim it was bound for Syria – but diplomats knew there might be consequences
The morning after a group of 30 Royal Marines helped seize the Iranian-flagged Grace 1 in Gibraltar, tired Foreign Office officials did not look exactly jubilant. There was not exactly a sense of foreboding, but diplomats were aware of the wider bilateral consequences for British-Iranian relations.
Related: Hunt 'extremely concerned' as Iran seizes two British-linked oil tankers
Continue reading...UK government urgently seeking information after Stena Impero veered into Iranian waters
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed on Friday evening to have seized a British oil tanker, the Stena Impero, which suddenly veered off course and headed into Iranian waters.
The ship’s owners issued a statement saying that at 3pm GMT (7pm local time), the ship had been “approached by unidentified small crafts and a helicopter during transit of the strait of Hormuz while the vessel was in international waters”.
Continue reading...Israel sprays buffer zone to deprive potential ‘terror elements’ of cover, but farmers in Gaza say crops and livelihoods are damaged
Israeli aircraft spraying herbicide beside the buffer zone along the Gaza strip is directly affecting the livelihoods of Palestinians in violation of international standards, a new report claims.
The study tracked the drift of the herbicides on to the Gazan side and concluded it was killing agricultural crops and causing “unpredictable and uncontrollable damage”, according to the report’s main researcher.
Continue reading...The US has said that one of its warships brought down an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz, amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
The incident was first revealed by Donald Trump, who said that USS Boxer, an amphibious assault ship, took defensive action after the drone came within 1,000 yards of the warship and ignored multiple calls to stand down.
Continue reading...Three Isis supporters who killed two Scandinavian women given death sentence
Three men have been sentenced to death in Morocco for the Isis-inspired murder of two Scandinavian hikers in the Atlas mountains last December.
The two victims, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway, were beheaded by a group of men who wanted to impress Islamic State. The three men confessed to their murder at a court in Salé, near Rabat.
Continue reading...Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vows to find those behind attack on restaurant in city of Erbil
A gunman has killed a senior Turkish diplomat and a civilian in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, in a daytime attack inside a restaurant.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, vowed to find whoever was behind the “treacherous” attack. The dead man was identified by Iraqi media as the deputy consul for the region.
Continue reading...Ravers, semi-naked sun-worshippers, booming queer culture … we meet the photographers chronicling a new generation of Lebanese shaking off the trauma of civil war
‘Parties are a privileged place, a space for exploration, a time for fusion,” says photographer Cha Gonzalez. They’re also the focus of her series Abandon, which looks at the way some Lebanese people have used nightlife – and techno music in particular – as a release after the trauma of the country’s 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990. “I knew a lot of people who were either born during the war or in exile,” she says. “What was put aside during the day came to light – and their internal struggles surfaced.”
Abandon is a pertinent theme not only for Gonzalez, but for all of the 16 contributors to an exhibition in Paris called C’est Beyrouth (This Is Beirut), at the Institut des Cultures d’Islam. Gonzalez in particular seized on the city’s dance scene, and later continued the series in Paris, where she lives, because “there was something to say about countries that are very far from war as well. The war is inside us: how we feel useless, alone, bored, guilty, horny.”
Continue reading...Pupils believe their bilingual school is proof that peace is possible between Palestinians and Israelis
It’s mid-morning in grade one and children are sitting in small groups, peering over colourful maths books. When it reaches 9.45am, a song plays for morning break and excited chattering breaks out.
It sounds like a typical classroom scene, but their school, say students, is unlike any other. The children are growing up in Jerusalem, a city at the heart of the Israel and Palestine conflict, where communities are deeply divided. Max Rayne Hand in Hand school is the only place in Jerusalem where students from Jewish and Arab backgrounds learn together, studying a bilingual and multicultural curriculum.
Continue reading...US intelligence fears vessel could have been hijacked by Revolutionary Guards
US officials suspect that a Panamanian-flagged oil tanker that stopped transmitting its location after straying into Iranian waters may have been hijacked by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA said on Tuesday that the country’s navy came to the assistance of the Panamanian ship MT Riah after it had mechanical problems.
Continue reading...Prominent researcher Fariba Adelkhah was arrested in June, reports say
France has demanded immediate consular access to a senior French-Iranian academic who has been arrested in Iran.
Fariba Adelkhah, a prominent researcher in anthropology and social sciences based at the Paris political institute Sciences Po, is believed to have been arrested in June.
Continue reading...Sweet-smelling success for Syrians who have settled in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley is dampened by growing anti-Syrian sentiment
When the plastic bucket is filled with roses, Nahla al-Zarda takes it into the kitchen, where she separates the petals from the buds. She soaks them in boiling water, which blushes pink.
“I love this colour. It will be even stronger when the drink is ready,” she says.
Continue reading...