Microsoft founder Bill Gates in an email to Bloomberg Monday dared to speak in favor of Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal whom he called an “important partner”. Alwaleed has been detained along with 200 others in a corruption clean-up drive directed by Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. The 62-year old businessman is listed among the […]
The Kuwaiti appeal court Monday handed opposition figures, including leader Musallam al-Barrak, jail terms ranging from one to nine years for storming the National Assembly six years ago. Barrak, a former MP, just completed in April a two-year prison term for insulting publicly the country’s Emir. He is found guilty along several current and former […]
Hamas Monday ruled out demands to disarm its military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, saying that the weapons will rather be moved to the West Bank to fight Israel. The Islamist movement has agreed to reconcile with rival Fatah in the West Bank. Under a deal signed in Cairo in October, Hamas, which has been […]
The EU missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah has deplored the continuing threat of demolitions and seizures of Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank, and reiterated its strong opposition to Israel’s settlement policy. This came in a statement released Monday by the European Union Representative and the EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah. […]
The political turmoil in the Gulf and the drop in international oil prices are not affecting the UAE’s economy nor Abu Dhabi’s economic diversification plans, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, CEO of Mubadala, a sovereign fund with around $125 billion of assets under management and specializes in buyout investments. “Ever since the establishment of the UAE, this […]
Iran and Turkey Sunday bolstered commercial ties with Qatar, isolated by its regional neighbors over alleged support for terrorism, under an agreement signed Sunday. The agreement underlines greater cooperation between the three coungtries, announced the Iranian state television. According to the media, the agreement provides for the creation of a “joint working group to facilitate […]
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri Sunday confessed to a Saudi media that his country cannot do anything to numb Hezbollah’s might adding that a solution can only come from regional powers, Middle East Monitor reports. “The solution for Hezbollah’s arms is a regional solution, not a domestic one. For that, we [Lebanon] cannot do anything […]
A Cairo court Sunday ordered the release of 17 people, part of as many as 57 individuals, arrested last month and accused of homosexuality and incitement to debauchery, judicial sources revealed. The men faced paying a fine of $285 or spending three years in prison after they were arrested last month in a security force […]
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, aka MbS, who was hosting a meeting of top defense officials of Muslim-majority countries Sunday in Riyadh, urged for stronger action to erase terrorism from the surface of the earth. The Sunday gathering, held in the wake of the terror attack on a mosque in Egypt’s Sinai that killed […]
Iraq announced that it plans to build a new pipeline that will ship oil from Kirkuk’s oilfields to the Ceyhan port in Turkey, in an attempt to reduce dependence on the pipeline crossing the territories under the administration of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). Iraq’s Oil Ministry explained in a statement that the new pipeline […]