Category: 2. Middle East

NEW YORK — US President Donald Trump withdrew on Thursday his nomination of staunch pro-Israel Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, a move that could help Republicans maintain their narrow majority in the House but will delay the filling of the ambassadorship. 

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that he asked Stefanik to remain in Congress, citing the Republicans’ “very tight Majority.”

“I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to…

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces vowed on Thursday there would be “no retreat and no surrender” and said they had “repositioned” forces, after rival army troops recaptured nearly all of central Khartoum.

From inside the recaptured presidential palace, Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at war with his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo since April 2023, had on Wednesday declared the capital “free” from the RSF.

But in its first direct comment since the army…

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces vowed on Thursday there would be “no retreat and no surrender” after rival troops of the regular army retook nearly all of central Khartoum.

From inside the recaptured presidential palace, Sudan’s army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, at war with his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo since April 2023, had on Wednesday declared the capital “free” from the RSF.

But in its first direct comment since the army retook what remains of the…

A US judge ordered Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday to preserve messages from a chat group used by top national security officials to discuss plans for an attack on Yemen’s Huthi rebels.

The ruling adds to the pressure on the White House after the Atlantic magazine revealed that its editor had been accidentally added to the group on the commercially-available Signal app.

Republican Trump has dismissed the scandal as a “witch-hunt” while attacking the Atlantic and its editor-in-chief…

Senior Republican and Democratic US senators issued a bipartisan call Thursday for a probe into a scandal over an accidentally leaked chat between top officials on Yemen air strikes that has engulfed Donald Trump’s White House.

Republican Senator Roger Wicker, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and ranking Democrat Jack Reed wrote to a Pentagon watchdog asking it to “conduct an inquiry” into the incident.

The Atlantic magazine published the full chat — which Trump’s top…

Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt has accused Israel of exploiting followers of his minority faith in Syria as part of a broader plan to divide the Middle East along sectarian lines.

Israel wants “to implement the plan it has always had… which is to break up the region into confessional entities and extend the chaos,” said Jumblatt, a key figure in Lebanese politics for more than four decades.

“They want to annihilate Gaza, then it will be the West Bank’s turn… they are trying to…

AFP photographer Yasin Akgul, who was arrested this week covering Turkey’s worst unrest in more than a decade, was freed Thursday from an Istanbul jail, AFP correspondents said, though his lawyer said the charges against him remain.

Akgul was detained in a pre-dawn raid at his home Monday and remanded in custody by an Istanbul court a day later.

He was charged with “taking part in illegal rallies and marches”, drawing outrage from rights groups and the Paris-based news agency.

On Thursday, the…