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...Thousands of Aleppians are using a Facebook group to share their way of life before the Syrian war
Going to the hammam was once a beloved ritual for Aleppo resident Atef Shikhouni and his friends. Recalling the boisterous, joyful experience, the 55-year-old wrote: “Here is a man shouting, ‘Where is the soap?’ while another one is asking for the shampoo and a third wants someone to rub his back. It becomes very noisy. After spending some time in the sauna, it is time for the ‘rubbing man’. He uses a rough loofah to rub my body mercilessly and I pray it will end without any damage.”
But that was before the outbreak of war in Syria. “Today, the bath is cold and has no soul,” the sports teacher wrote in February 2017, shortly after the worst of the fighting in Aleppo had ended. “Cruel are our days, exactly like our bath today.”
Continue reading...UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt tries to reinforce nuclear deal abandoned by US
Tensions in the Middle East could pose an existential threat to mankind unless the Iran nuclear deal is maintained, Jeremy Hunt will say on Monday in his starkest warning since the regional crisis escalated two months ago.
Speaking ahead of an EU meeting in Brussels, the UK foreign secretary will try to underline the importance of the deal, which was abandoned unilaterally by the US a year ago, leading to an accelerating reciprocal withdrawal by Iran.
Continue reading...Relatives hope raising awareness in the US can help end detention of Hathloul who battled the ban on women driving
When Lina al-Hathloul learned her sister, the Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, had been whisked away by Saudi Arabian police in the middle of the night, she thought it was a joke.
Related: Saudi Arabia 'planning to relax male guardianship laws'
Continue reading...Pharoah Sneferu’s structure marks key step in Egyptian architecture, as builders had to change the angle when it started to crack
Egypt has opened to visitors the “bent” pyramid built for the pharaoh Sneferu, a 101-metre structure south of Cairo that marks a key step in the evolution of pyramid construction.
Tourists will now be able to clamber down a 79-metre long, narrow tunnel from a raised entrance on the pyramid’s northern face, to reach two chambers deep inside the 4,600-year-old structure.
Continue reading...Briton and Canadian-Somali journalist among dead in suicide bombing and shooting in Kismayo claimed by al-Shabaab
Special forces in Somalia have ended an all-night siege at a hotel raided by armed Islamic militants, officials have said.
The death toll from the attack in the southern port city of Kismayo, which began on Friday evening, has risen to 26 people, including a prominent Canadian-Somali journalist and several foreigners.
Continue reading...“This is a dangerous game,” an Iranian foreign ministry official warned on Friday. He was urging the UK to release the Iranian tanker which the British navy helped authorities in Gibraltar to seize last week. But the context, as he made clear, is the intensifying struggle between Washington and Tehran, in which the main players appear overconfident they know the rules and understand the stakes, while minor players fret about outcomes they have limited power to change.
Mohamed ElBaradei, who headed the UN nuclear watchdog in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, has offered one of the sharpest warnings of the potential consequences: “All that I hear basically [brings] to mind the days before the Iraq war,” he told the BBC. The Iranian regime’s record at home and in the region is a grim one. But this crisis was created by the US president’s determination to destroy an international nuclear deal – which Iran was abiding by – and throttle the economy. It cornered Tehran and empowered its hardliners, who seized on the proof that America could never be trusted.
Continue reading...MoD says destroyer will be deployed within days to protect British commercial oil tankers
The UK is stepping up its military presence in the Gulf by sending a second warship to the region to protect British commercial oil tankers, the Ministry of Defence has said.
The HMS Duncan, a Type 45 destroyer, will be deployed within days after it completed a course of Nato exercises in the Baltic Sea with the aim to be in the Gulf region by next week.
Continue reading...Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe wrongly arrested based on tipoffs from NCA and GCHQ
The acquittal of Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe by an Italian court of being a human trafficking kingpin is a major embarrassment for Britain’s National Crime Agency and the GCHQ intelligence service.
Berhe’s arrest in 2016 was trumpeted as a major coup in the battle against international people-smuggling, but unbeknown to them at the time, the Italian and British authorities had mistaken the Eritrean for one of the world’s most-wanted human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, aka the General.
Continue reading...Judge acquits Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe of being a human trafficking kingpin
A Palermo judge has acquitted an Eritrean man of being a human trafficking kingpin, confirming he was the victim of mistaken identity when he was arrested more than three years ago in a joint operation between Italian and British authorities.
The arrest of Medhanie Tesfamariam Berhe in 2016 was presented to the press as a brilliant coup by Italian and British authorities, who mistook him for one of the world’s most-wanted human traffickers, Medhanie Yehdego Mered, aka the General.
Continue reading...Mohamad Rahimeh found a talent for cooking in the Calais refugee camp. Now he has a viable business in London
When Mohamad Rahimeh arrived in the Calais refugee camp that was nicknamed “the Jungle”, cooking was the last thing on his mind. He was a political scientist from Syria with a journey from hell behind him. Food was just a means to an end.
But when a close friend fell sick, he rustled up a meal of eggs. A hidden talent was uncovered.
Continue reading...Top general says plotters were trying to disrupt recent truce between army and protesters
Sudan’s ruling military council has foiled a coup attempt, a top general has announced on state television, saying that 12 officers and four soldiers have been arrested.
The announcement late on Thursday closely followed the ruling military and civilian protesters agreeing to end a political impasse, after the army ousted longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in April on the back of a popular uprising.
Continue reading...Fears commercial vessels at risk from gunboats following HMS Montrose’s intervention
British ships operating in the Gulf have been put on the highest state of alert amid fears that UK-flagged commercial vessels are vulnerable to attack by Iranian gunboats.
The change in guidance from the British government, changing the alert to level 3, was made on Tuesday, a day before a Royal Navy warship trained its guns on Iranian gunboats that tried to disrupt the passage of an Isle of Man-flagged vessel. Level 3 is described as equivalent to the domestic security classification of critical in which there is an imminent risk of an incident.
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