Dammam- US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled on Monday to start a Middle East tour on the Qatari crisis. Kuwait will be the first stop in his visit to the region after media reports said it received a special envoy from the emir of Qatar. Tillerson’s tour comes after a tour by his [&hell
Beirut – Lebanese Information Minister Melhem Riachi voiced the Lebanese Forces’ rejection of “any negotiations” between the Lebanese government and Syrian regime over the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland. He told Asharq Al-Awsat: “As partners in this government, we will not accept negoti
Mosul – Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi announced on Sunday the “major victory” in the city of Mosul that was “liberated” from ISIS terrorists 37 months after they captured it on June 9, 2014, said his press office. After nearly nine months of urban warfare, his office issued a statement saying
Washington- The World Bank and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) report has said child marriage will cost developing countries trillions of dollars by 2030. In contrast, ending child marriage would have a large positive effect on the educational attainment of girls and their chil
Brighton (England)- A group of artists in the southern English coastal town of Brighton are taking their works off the gallery wall and offering them to the public via an unusual channel, through a vending machine. The machine, located in a club in the center of the city, offers prospective buyers p
More heavy rain was expected Sunday as rescuers in Japan searched for survivors in floods in southwest of the country that have left at least 18 people dead. Hundreds of others have been displaced in freak rains that have also triggered landslides, public broadcaster NHK reported on Sunday. About 1,
A French national appeared in court on Sunday on charges of plotting a terrorist attack. The 42-year-old was planning the plot with two Belgian brothers who were charged in Brussels this week, judicial sources said. According to a source close to the enquiry, the man — whose name was not given
Leopoldo Lopez, Venezuela’s most prominent political prisoner, was released from prison on Saturday, but promptly placed under house arrest. Lopez, leader of the Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) party and a symbol of resistance to President Nicolas Maduro’s government, emerged hours after his r
The self-proclaimed “deal maker” finally got the beginnings of what could be an important diplomatic agreement in Friday’s Russian-American summit in Hamburg. For a rookie, President Trump appears to have avoided big mishaps that sometimes plague such great-power talks. The importance of the meeting
Alexandre Lacazette has the numbers to press his case. Across eight seasons at Lyon the striker scored 100 goals in 203 Ligue 1 appearances and there were a further 29 in the cups and Europe. The supporters of his boyhood club will remember the spectacular ones, and there were a number of those, but
When North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile this week — what its boy tyrant called a “gift to the American bastards” — the response from the Trump administration was fairly conventional. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson correctly called it an escalation. He
More than 120 countries approved the first-ever treaty to ban nuclear weapons Friday at a UN meeting boycotted by all nuclear-armed nations. To loud applause, Elayne Whyte Gomez, president of the UN conference that has been negotiating the legally binding treaty, announced the results of the “histor
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Saturday said relations with the United States should “generate mutual respect and build confidence,” a day after US President Donald Trump renewed his commitment to building a wall on the border between the two neighbors. Speaking at the end of his trip to Ha
Erbil – The Higher Council for the Referendum in the Iraqi Kurdistan region affirmed on Saturday its commitment to holding an independence vote on September 25. Head of the region Masoud Barzani is meanwhile scheduled to travel to Brussels next week in order to address the vote with European Union o
Ramallah, Gaza – Unconfirmed news about the participation of former Hamas members in the ISIS’ attack in the Sinai Peninsula that killed at least 23 Egyptian soldiers stirred up debates in Palestine and Egypt. Social media accounts of ISIS supporters reported that three persons from Rafah, south of
Cairo – The Libyan National Army (LNA) announced on Saturday that it was still pursuing the remaining extremists in the northern city of Benghazi only days after it announced that it was liberated from the gunmen. Military and medical officials announced that 12 members of the army were killed and 3
Washington, Baghdad, Mosul – Iraq will imminently announce a final victory in its battle to retake Mosul from ISIS, a US general said. “An announcement is imminent,” Brigadier General Robert Sofge told AFP on Saturday, adding: “I don’t want to speculate if it’s today or tomorrow but I think it’s goi
Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed his thanks and appreciation to the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, for the Kingdom’s support for the Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (
Moscow – Russian President Vladimir Putin described on Saturday the United States’ position on the Syrian civil war as “more pragmatic”. During a press conference in Hamburg, Germany, Putin said he discussed the Syrian crisis with all the leaders he met with. “It seems to me that the US positi
Around 60 imams from several European countries are on a bus tour of cities hit by “Islamist” terrorism in order to condemn extremism committed in the name of religion. Their message is that Islam is a religion of peace. “Our message is clear,” said the chief organizer, Hasse
