Category: 2. Middle East

Iran’s top diplomat said Tuesday he believed a new nuclear deal could be agreed with the United States provided Tehran’s longtime foe shows sufficient goodwill in talks to begin in Oman on Saturday.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran’s principal aim remained the lifting of sweeping US sanctions. Their reimposition by President Donald Trump in 2018 has dealt a heavy blow to the Iranian economy.

Trump made the surprise announcement that his administration would open talks with Iran during…

French President Emmanuel Macron visited Egypt’s port city of El-Arish on Tuesday, a key transit point for Gaza-bound aid, to call on Israel to lift restrictions on humanitarian access to the war-battered Palestinian territory.

An AFP journalist said Macron was in El-Arish, 50 kilometres (30 miles) west of the Gaza Strip, along with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Macron, who arrived in Cairo on Sunday, has said he would meet with sick Palestinians and medical professionals in…

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, Europe’s climate monitor said on Tuesday, prolonging an unprecedented heat streak that has pushed the bounds of scientific explanation.

In Europe, it was the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service, driving rainfall extremes across a continent warming faster than any other.

The world meanwhile saw the second-hottest March in the Copernicus dataset, sustaining a near-unbroken spell…

All of the women in Iranian model Azadeh’s family have had nose surgeries, each feeling the pressure to conform with Western beauty standards in a country where female bodies are heavily policed.

To Azadeh, smoothing out the bump in what Iranians would call the “Persian nose” she was born with proved a lucrative investment.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iranian women have been required to dress modestly and cover their hair, and the beauty industry has become almost entirely centred on…

Global temperatures hovered at historic highs in March, Europe’s climate monitor said on Tuesday, prolonging an extraordinary heat streak that has tested scientific expectations.

In Europe, it was the hottest March ever recorded by a significant margin, said the Copernicus Climate Change Service, driving rainfall extremes across a continent warming faster than any other.

The world meanwhile saw the second-hottest March in the Copernicus dataset, sustaining a near-unbroken spell of record or…

Hamas and rescuers said an Israeli strike on southern Gaza killed one journalist and wounded nine others on Monday, while the Israeli military reported it targeted a militant posing as a reporter.

The journalist is one of at least 12 people killed in Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory on Monday, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency, as the war entered its 19th month.

An air strike hit a tent used by journalists in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, killing two people, said…

Shuttered storefronts lined empty streets in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank on Monday during a general strike by Palestinians demanding an end to the Gaza war.

“I walked through the city today and couldn’t find a single place that was open,” Fadi Saadi, a shopkeeper in Bethlehem, told AFP.

Shops, schools and most public administrative offices were closed across the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

A coalition of Palestinian political movements –…