Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Carola Rackete says act of ‘disobedience’ in Lampedusa was necessary to avert tragedy
An NGO rescue boat captain who has risked jail time after forcing her way into Lampedusa port in Italy with 40 migrants onboard has defended her act of “disobedience”, saying it was necessary to avert a tragedy.
“It wasn’t an act of violence, but only one of disobedience,” the Sea-Watch 3 skipper, Carola Rackete, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera in an interview published on Sunday, as donations poured in for her legal defence.
Demolition ordered by military leaves 5,000 families homeless again, says charity
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are being forced to tear down their own homes in the face of an aggressive new campaign by the Lebanese authorities to pressure refugees into returning home.
In the border town of Arsal, informal settlements that house 55,000 refugees were the scene of frantic activity under the hot summer sun on Friday as young men took apart the breeze-block homes with pickaxes, hammers and drills, covering the ground in rubble and dust.
Vladimir Putin says deal due to expire on Sunday will be extended by six to nine months
Russia has agreed with Saudi Arabia to extend by six to nine months a deal with Opec on reducing oil output, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said, as oil prices come under renewed pressure from rising US supplies and a slowing global economy.
The Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih, said on Sunday that the deal would most likely be extended by nine months and no deeper reductions were needed.
Prime minister urges open legal process over murder and raises Yemen concerns
Theresa May has raised concerns about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the humanitarian cost of the conflict in Yemen during a face-to-face meeting with the Saudi crown prince at the G20 summit in Osaka.
The prime minister held a bilateral meeting with Mohammed bin Salman on Saturday at what will be May’s final global summit before she steps down in July.
Expectations are not being met in discussions with world powers, claims Iranian envoy
Iran said some progress had been made at a meeting with world powers on its nuclear accord – but probably “still not enough” to keep the landmark 2015 deal alive.
“It was a step forward, but it is still not enough and not meeting Iran’s expectations,” said Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, after the talks on Friday. “I don’t think the progress made today will be enough to stop our process – but the decision will be made in Tehran.”
Jeremy Hunt says Britain would stand with the US in the case of military intervention. How has Iraq been forgotten so quickly?
The imperial city of Persepolis, ruined capital of Persia’s kings, rises from the desert north-east of Shiraz like a rebuke to invaders, ancient and modern. Its marble columns, many still standing, were erected about 500BC when inhabitants of the British Isles were capering around in animal skins and it was Greeks who posed the biggest military threat. Donald Trump’s America was a bad idea whose time had not yet come.
Britain’s recent history with Iran is, for the most part, shaming. Nineteenth-century imperialists and traders exploited and bullied, redrawing its borders with the Raj. British armies invaded and occupied and, in the 1920s, helped to elevate Reza Shah to the peacock throne. The ensuing era of autocratic rule sowed the seeds of the anti-western 1979 Islamic revolution. At Persepolis, graffiti left by Victorian army officers still defaces its pillars.
Exclusive: Wife of jailed Taoufik Bouachrine says murdered Saudi critic knew her husband was in danger
The wife of a prominent Moroccan newspaper editor and critic of Saudi Arabia has described how the murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi warned her husband that his life was in danger in the months before he was arrested in Morocco and jailed for offences he has consistently denied.
Asmae Moussaoui, 43, also says she believes Saudi Arabia told the Moroccan government to silence her husband Taoufik Bouachrine, 49, shortly before he was taken into custody.
Country may be waiting on outcome of talks setting out plans to kickstart trade with EU
Iran has held back on its threat to make its first breach of the nuclear deal and may be waiting for the outcome of talks with EU powers, China and Russia in Vienna.
At the talks on Friday the EU countries will set out plans to kickstart trade between Tehran and the bloc, one of the Iranian preconditions for sticking with the deal.
Strategically significant victory in Gharyan puts pressure on General Haftar’s backers Egypt and UAE
Forces loyal to Libya’s UN-recognised Government of National Accord say they have captured a strategic town from General Khalifa Haftar, the warlord mounting a deadly siege of the capital, Tripoli.
GNA forces were shown on social media celebrating in Gharyan, a town 50 miles south of Tripoli that served as a supply line for Haftar. The GNA’s air force chased convoys of soldiers from Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) leaving the city, and inflicted further casualties.
Senior adviser to Trump found no interest in his proposals for ending Israel/Palestine conflict
In the end, the ‘deal of the century’ was little more than a failed clearance sale. Jared Kushner arrived in Bahrain touting bedrock principles at untenable discounts. And even then there were no buyers.
The conference that was supposed to offer a new way out of the malaise of the Israel/Palestine conflict provided little of the sort. Its central premise of prosperity as a precursor to a lasting solution barely appeared to register on either side of the separation wall.
Since March 2015, the photographer and author Joey Lawrence has had unprecedented access to Kurdish guerrilla organisations fighting Isis, embedding himself into the Iraq and Syrian civil war. His powerful portraits of the fighters give a different perspective to the conflict
We came from fire, and we will return to fire
The war against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has flooded our daily news with troubling statistics of massacres and mass migrations, yet there are faces and human stories at the heart of the conflict. Joey L wrote: “From Iraq, one crosses the Tigris River into war-torn Syria, and is catapulted into a worldview crafted by the guerrilla.”
Plan demands Palestinians put a price on their surrender or risk losing even more ground
In the long, lamented history of Israeli-Palestinian peace plans, rarely have expectations been so low. As Jared Kushner took to the stage in Bahrain to effectively lay waste to decades of doctrine on how to solve the conflict, a solution seemed more out of reach than ever.
Kushner’s proposal has been put together by hardliners who have tossed out the rulebook and written a formula of their own serving the interests of the Israeli rightwing.
No Israelis or Palestinians present for launch of plan that shreds decades of diplomacy
The first phase of the Trump administration’s long-awaited peace plan for Israel and Palestine has been rolled out to scepticism, anger and outright derision.
A conference hall of regional officials – with no Israelis or Palestinians present – was the first to hear details of the US-brokered deal, an economic blueprint that shreds decades of diplomacy and which even its mooted financial backers seemed reluctant to embrace.
The Saudis are good customers, Trump says – which evidently outweighs the fact they murdered and carved up a Washington Post journalist
It’s that time of a presidency when every incumbent pretends to be what he isn’t, or to do what he hasn’t. With a re-election year kicking off, everyone wants to know if the candidate can fill in the gaping holes in his record, to give voters some reason to hope or believe.
Relatives say more than 30 people stuck at sea told to go home or lose food and water
More than 30 migrants from Bangladesh who were trapped on a merchant ship off Tunisia for three weeks have been sent back to their home country against their will, according to relatives.
They were among 75 migrants rescued on 31 May by the Maridive 601, an Egyptian tugboat that services offshore oil platforms, only to spend the next 20 days at sea near the Tunisian coast.
Foreign ministry spokesman accuses Trump administration of destroying peace and security
Iran says the US decision to impose sanctions on its supreme leader and other top officials is “idiotic” and has permanently closed the path to diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
Donald Trump imposed new sanctions on Monday against the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and top military chiefs, in an unprecedented step designed to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran’s downing of an unmanned American drone. Khamenei is Iran’s utmost authority who has the last say on all state matters.
Trump son-in-law’s plan, which ignores the key political issues, is dismissed as ‘a fantasy that is completely divorced from reality’
A US-designed economic blueprint for Israeli-Palestinian peace will be launched in Bahrain on Tuesday, without the participation of either Palestinian or Israeli officials.
The Palestinians are boycotting the conference and a late decision was taken not to invite Israelis. A relative handful of Palestinian business leaders are expected in Bahrain, for what is widely seen as a “vanity project” for Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The article on journalist and advice columnist E Jean Carroll’ssexual assault allegations against President Trump mysteriously disappeared on the New York Post website on Friday afternoon; the wire story by the Associated Press was also scrubbed.
Today, CNN is reporting that former editor-in-chief Col Allan - a longtime Trump supporter and “old lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch who returned to the conservative tabloid as an adviser in early 2019” - ordered that the story be removed.
Some news: Murdoch lieutenant Col Allan ordered the removal of the New York Post's story on Jean Carroll's sexual assault allegation against Trump, sources tell me and @garveyshufflehttps://t.co/GTh4z7N2eZ
Hundreds of children were moved out of a Texas Border Patrol station where they were held with inadequate food, water and sanitation for weeks. At this station, a legal team interviewed 60 children and documented kids forced to take care of kids, no clean clothing, weeks of no baths and poor nutrition.
This morning, my office was informed that only 30 children remain in the Clint Border Patrol station in El Paso County.
Last week, @hrw lawyers found 255 children in beyond alarming conditions in the same station. pic.twitter.com/tmBC3M0aqP
JUST IN: 249 of the children are now in the ORR shelter system according to Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the agency. https://t.co/gdhsc2GgkH
Sanctions target supreme leader and eight commanders of Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Donald Trump has ordered new sanctions against Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and other officials including eight Revolutionary Guard commanders in the latest step of an escalating pressure campaign.
Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, will also face fresh sanctions in a few days, US officials said. He negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal with the US and other major powers, and has spearheaded Iranian diplomacy since.
Survey of 25,000 people in Middle East and North Africa also shows 52% of 18- to 29-year-olds are thinking about migrating
The Arab world is turning its back on religion and on US relations, according to the largest public opinion survey ever carried out in the region.
A survey of more than 25,000 people across 10 countries and the Palestinian territories found that trust in religious leaders has plummeted in recent years.