Turkish defence firm Baykar has delivered 20 armed drones to the United Arab Emirates this month and could sell more, two Turkish sources said, as a diplomatic detente between the former regional rivals expands into military contracts. International de…
Mahsa Amini: Anonymous claims cyberattack on Iran websites
A Twitter account linked to the Anonymous hacker group claims to have launched cyber attacks against the Iranian government and affiliated websites. It said the attacks were in support of protests following the death of Mahsa Amini. Amini, a 22-year-ol…
Israel detains staff working on Jordan Valley solar panels
Israeli forces stormed a community in the occupied northern Jordan Valley region with staff from an environmental NGO briefly detained. Workers from the Israeli-Palestinian NGO Comet-ME were held in Wadi Al-Faw on Tuesday by members of a nearby Jewish …
No Iran-US deal making Mideast ‘more dangerous’: Qatar FM
Failure to revive the Iran nuclear deal is making the Middle East “a more dangerous place”, Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani has said. The top diplomat for Qatar, which has friendly ties with both Iran and the US and key mediat…
Afghanistan: Taliban appoints hardline education minister
The Taliban supreme leader has installed a loyalist cleric as Afghanistan’s education minister, with the hardline Islamists doubling down on their ban on secondary education for girls. Hundreds of thousands of girls and young women have been deprived o…
Ukraine: Putin announces mobilisation & nuclear threat
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered Russia’s first mobilisation since World War Two, warning the West that if it continued what he called its “nuclear blackmail” – Moscow would respond with the might of all its vast arsenal. “If the territori…
Istanbul mayor who upstaged Erdogan faces ‘political ban’
Istanbul’s popular mayor faces the threat of being banned from politics on Wednesday in a trial stemming from his surprise election victory over an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2019. Ekrem Imamoglu’s fate is being watched closely for signs…
Leaders warn of rising divisions amid Ukraine, climate woes
World leaders warned on Tuesday that the Ukraine war risked creating a new era of divisions at a time when worsening climate change and rising food prices risk unleashing new instability. The UN General Assembly, the annual gathering of world leaders t…
Truss vows billions in Ukraine aid, says US trade talks off
Britain’s new Prime Minister Liz Truss on Tuesday vowed billions more in financial and military aid to Ukraine as she kicked off her debut foreign trip at the UN General Assembly. Ahead of her first meeting with US President Joe Biden, Truss also conce…
Ethiopia ‘rejects’ UN report on crimes against humanity
Ethiopia’s ambassador to Geneva on Tuesday rejected a report by UN investigators that accused Addis Ababa of possible crimes against humanity in Tigray, including using starvation as a weapon of war. “There is not any single evidence that shows the gov…