Category: 2. Middle East

WASHINGTON/ANKARA — US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he might travel to Turkey on Thursday for a potential meeting between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

“I think you may have a good result out of the Thursday meeting in Turkey between Russia and Ukraine and I believe the two leaders were going to be there,” Trump told journalists at the White House, in reference to a potential meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.

“I was…

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman launched a new company to develop and manage artificial intelligence technologies in Saudi Arabia today, a top priority of its economic diversification drive, Reuters reports.

US President Donald Trump travels to Saudi Arabia this week, the first stop on his Gulf tour, and AI is expected to be a major discussion point during tomorrow’s joint Saudi-US investment forum in Riyadh.

The kingdom, the world’s biggest crude…

Israel has asked the International Criminal Court to dismiss its arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant while ICC judges reconsider complex jurisdictional questions.

In a 14-page document dated May 9 but posted on the ICC website on Monday, Israel argued the warrants issued in November were null and void while judges weigh a previous Israeli challenge to the ICC’s jurisdiction in the case.

In a ruling that made headlines around the…

Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander, 21, was released from Gaza captivity Monday evening after 584 days, in a deal negotiated between the Trump administration and Hamas. 

Alexander, the only Israeli-American hostage known to be still alive, was released in Khan Younis in the south of the Strip, where Red Cross representatives received him. The handover did not include a release ceremony, as was the case in prior Israel-Hamas hostage-release deals. The Red Cross is now driving Alexander…

Gaza is at “critical risk of famine”, with 22 percent of the population facing an imminent humanitarian “catastrophe” after more than two months of an aid blockade by Israel, a food security monitor warned Monday.

Gaza’s entire population of around 2.4 million people is at risk of a food crisis “or worse” by September, the UN- and NGO-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) said in a report.

“Nineteen months into the conflict, the Gaza Strip is still confronted with a…

Saada Arbane has lived without a voice since her throat was slit during the Algerian civil war. But now, the 31-year-old woman has vowed to make herself heard after she said a best-selling novel plagiarised her life.

Kamel Daoud’s novel “Houris” — banned in Algeria and awarded France’s top literary prize Prix Goncourt last year — tells the story of a child who loses her voice when an Islamist cuts her throat during the 1990s war.

Last November, Arbane took the literary world by storm when…