Category: 2. Middle East

Hungary’s parliament today approved a bill that will start the country’s year-long withdrawal process from the International Criminal Court (ICC), which Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government said has become “political”, Reuters reports.

Orban’s government announced the move on 3 April, shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Hungary for a state visit in defiance of an ICC arrest warrant. The ICC’s Presidency of the…

Twin Gazan filmmakers Arab and Tarzan Nasser said they never thought the title of their new film “Once Upon A Time In Gaza” would have such heartbreaking resonance.

“Right now there is nothing left of Gaza,” said Tarzan when it premiered on Monday at the Cannes film festival.

Since militants from Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, more than 18 months of Israeli bombardment has ravaged large swathes of the Palestinian territory and killed tens of thousands of…

Dozens of unidentified bodies have been discovered in Tripoli, according to the Libyan Ministry of Interior.

At least 58 bodies were found yesterday inside the morgue of the Accident Hospital in the Abu Selim district of the capital, an area that had been under the control of an armed group until the recent killing of its leader, Abdel Ghani Al-Kikli, also known as Gheniwa.

In an official statement, the ministry said the bodies were found inside the morgue’s…

Or Sinai didn’t have to go far to find the subject of her acclaimed debut film about the secret lives of the millions of women who support their families back home by being domestic workers abroad.

She was chatting to the “wonderful Ukrainian woman” who looks at her mother, who has Parkinson’s Disease, when the housekeeper started telling her about the lover she had taken.

“I realised that our view of migrant women is so wrong,” she told AFP at the Cannes film festival, where “Mama” is being…

The military spokesperson for Yemen’s Ansarallah group (the Houthis), Yahya Saree, announced yesterday that the group has begun enforcing a naval blockade on the port of Haifa in Israel, in line with directives issued by its leadership.

In an official statement, Saree warned: “We alert companies whose vessels are currently docked at this port or heading towards it that Haifa has, from the moment of this statement’s release, become one of our targets. These…

Qatar yesterday condemned in the strongest terms the Israeli occupation army’s bombing of the Sheikh Hamad Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Limbs Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.

“The [Israeli] occupation’s ongoing brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip, including its repeated targeting of civilians, hospitals, shelters for the displaced, and vital facilities, is part of the war of genocide against the brotherly Palestinian people,” the Qatari Foreign…

Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi makes his first appearance at an international film festival in 15 years at Cannes on Tuesday with a story about political prisoners trying to get their own back on their jailers.

Panahi was banned from making films and has been repeatedly detained since 2009 over his gritty, social dramas, considered subversive by the Islamic republic’s regime.

His new film, “It Was Just An Accident” — which is in the running for Cannes’s top prize — uses humour to…

Dissident Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi made his first appearance at an international film festival in 15 years in Cannes on Tuesday, with a story about political prisoners trying to get back at their jailers.

Panahi was banned from making films for 20 years and has been repeatedly detained since 2009 over his gritty, social dramas, considered subversive by the Islamic republic’s regime.

His new feature, “It Was Just An Accident” — which is in the running for the top prize — risks causing…

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed at least 44 people on Tuesday across the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, where Israel has intensified a military offensive aimed at crushing Hamas.

Aid trickled into the Gaza Strip on Monday for the first time in more than two months, following intense international condemnation over Israel’s total blockade that has sparked shortages of food and medicine.

The Israeli army stepped up its military offensive in Gaza on Saturday, saying it…

At first glance, the Instagram profile of Ms Rachel fits the image an influencer who has won millions of devoted subscribers for her sing-songy educational content for toddlers and parenting tips.

In a pink hairband and denim dungarees, the 42-year-old mother-of-two doles out advice on potty training kids and moral support for struggling parents — always with a reassuring smile.

So it was an abrupt shift last year when she began speaking out about the plight of children in Gaza, peppering her…