RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has left a New York hospital in “good health” after a month of treatment, state media said on Wednesday, showing pictures of the elderly monarch walking down a corridor. Media gave no date for when King Abdullah, who is around 87 and had arrived at the hospital in a wheelchair, [...]
CAIRO: A spokesman for Iran’s armed Sunni militant group says it will kill an abducted Iranian after authorities rejected an offer to swap the hostage for 200 of the group’s imprisoned members. Jundallah spokesman Abdel Raouf Rigi is quoted Wednesday by the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat daily as saying the hostage would be killed ”very soon.” [...]
DAMASCUS: Oshana Khamo is one of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have taken refuge in Syria from the violence at home and have been kept waiting for years to be resettled elsewhere to start a new life. He recalls how the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) summoned him in 2009 to sort [...]
During the meeting on Saturday night, Abdallah II received the written message of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and reiterated his interest in the expansion of ties with Tehran. Stressing Iran’s right to use the peaceful nuclear technology, he said, “Jordan recognizes the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear rights and supports Iran’s access to the peaceful [...]
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned last year in a leaked classified memo that donors in Saudi Arabia were the “most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide”. She said it was “an ongoing challenge” to persuade Saudi officials to treat such activity as a strategic priority. The groups funded include al-Qaeda, [...]
Iran is set to meet six world powers in the Swiss capital Geneva to discuss its nuclear programme. They are the first talks in over a year, but analysts say any breakthrough is unlikely. On Sunday Iran announced that it had delivered its first domestically produced raw uranium to a plant that can make it [...]
A German woman has been killed in a shark attack while snorkelling off the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, officials say. The death comes after four people were injured in similar attacks at the resort earlier in the week. Egyptian authorities had re-opened the waters after saying they captured the sharks involved in [...]
A leaked US embassy cable has revealed Egypt’s fears about the possibility of its neighbour Sudan breaking into two. In the cable, written last year, a foreign ministry official urged the US to help postpone a referendum on independence for Southern Sudan. The official said the creation of “a non-viable state” could threaten Egypt’s access [...]
Iran’s president has dismissed as propaganda the leaking of US cables detailing Arab calls for Washington to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the release by the Wikileaks website of thousands of extracts from US diplomatic messages was simply psychological warfare against Iran. He said the release would not affect Iran’s relations with other [...]
Saudi Arabia’s high court declared November 15 the start of hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Islam’s holy sites. The kingdom’s official SPA news agency said the court confirmed the sighting of the new moon. According to the lunar calendar, hajj begins nine days into the 12th month of the year – making the start [...]
