ANKARA — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday played up Turkey’s military might after extending a Mediterranean gas exploration mission that has pitted it against Greece and the rest of the EU.
Jerusalem — An Israeli-American delegation will fly on the first commercial flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates on Monday after a landmark deal between the countries, officials said Friday.
OMAN — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrapped up his trip to the Middle East and Sudan with a stop in Oman on Thursday to meet with Omani Sultan Haithambin Tarik Al Said.
BEIRUT — Lebanon is in such a deep political and economic crisis the country risks collapsing altogether, France’s foreign minister said Thursday, ahead of the French president’s visit to the country next week.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Israeli military says it struck militant targets in Gaza, including a weapons manufacturing site, after six rockets were fired from the territory early Friday.
ATHENS, Greece — Germany’s foreign minister was visiting Greece and Turkey on Tuesday in an effort to ease increasing tension between the two neighbors, which are at loggerheads over prospecting rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
Jerusalem — Israeli tanks and aircraft carried out new strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza overnight in response to the launch of so-called fire balloons across the border, the army said on Tuesday.
JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists announced Monday the discovery of a trove of early Islamic gold coins found during recent salvage excavations near the central city of Yavne.
BERLIN — Austrian authorities say a suspect has been arrested after an assault on the head of the Jewish community in Graz, the country’s second-biggest city.
Istanbul — Turkey’s big push into the Mediterranean featuring controversial gas drilling, tough rhetoric and warships is rooted in a grand vision of a “Blue Homeland” that takes over waters claimed by EU neighbours.
Washington — Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi will meet US President Donald Trump for the first time in Washington on Thursday, with the presence of American troops in the country at the top of his agenda.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran surpassed 20,000 confirmed deaths from the coronavirus on Wednesday, the health ministry said — the highest death toll for any Middle East country so far in the pandemic.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The head of Lebanon’s customs authority was formally arrested on Monday after being questioned over the massive explosion in Beirut earlier this month, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Frankfurt am Main — Israeli combat pilots and their German counterparts will on Tuesday honour Holocaust victims with a symbolic flyover of Dachau concentration camp, as they carry out their first joint military exercises in Germany.
Beirut — From his office in Beirut, Shady Rizk had a front-row view of the cataclysmic explosion at the Lebanese capital’s port.
The Israeli military said it carried out airstrikes in response to rocket fire from Gaza on over the weekend.
CAIRO — The woman accosted Yasmeen Samir as she swam with her family at a pool in a resort on the North Coast, a stretch of Mediterranean beaches reserved for Egypt’s upper echelons. The reason: Samir was wearing a burkini, a swimsuit worn by conservative Muslims to cover the entire body.
The Justice Department announced it has seized millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency intended to finance the activities of al-Qaeda, the al-Qassam Brigades and the Islamic State.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran and Turkey lashed out at their regional rival the United Arab Emirates on Friday over its decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel in a U.S.-brokered deal, accusing it of betraying the Palestinian cause.
Beirut’s port partially opened again Wednesday as officials and residents continued to recover from last week’s devastating blasts that killed hundreds and left thousands homeless in Lebanon’s capital city.
Tehran — Iran is watching developments in Lebanon closely, wary of losing any of its hard-won influence after a deadly mega-blast in Beirut sparked angry demands for reforms to its delicately balanced system.
Iran’s Intelligence Ministry said Saturday that it arrested the leader of what it describes as a terror group based in the United States.
Mina (Saudi Arabia) — Muslim pilgrims took part Friday in the “stoning of the devil”, using sanitised pebbles in the last major ritual of the scaled-down hajj as Saudi authorities seek to prevent a coronavirus outbreak.
CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced several young women to two years in prison Monday for posting “indecent” dance videos on TikTok in a fraught case that critics describe as a further crackdown on self-expression in the conservative society.
The radical New Israel Fund (NIF) has warned Israelis to turn off cellphones before attending anti-Netanyahu protests because they are used for “tracking purposes,” as well as instructing protesters how to act in the event of arrest.
BERLIN — German prosecutors said Monday a German woman who allegedly joined the Islamic State group in Syria was arrested upon her return to the country. She is accused of membership in a foreign terrorist group, war crimes against property and other crimes.
Doha — Qatar will seek to host the 2032 Olympic Games, it said on Monday, joining a crowded field and raising questions about scorching summer temperatures and underwhelming attendances at past events.
MAGDEBURG, Germany — A German man goes on trial Tuesday for a Yom Kippur attack on a synagogue that is considered one of the worst anti-Semitic assaults in the country’s post-war history.
This year’s hajj, which has been scaled back dramatically to include only around 1,000 Muslim pilgrims as Saudi Arabia battles a coronavirus surge, will begin on July 29, authorities said Monday.
TEL AVIV, Israel — As restaurants worldwide struggle to stay open in the coronavirus era, a new Tel Aviv noodle chain offers a pandemic-friendly approach: meals on the go with no human contact.
Amman — Jordan’s top court has dissolved the country’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a transnational Islamist movement, an official said Thursday, citing the group’s failure to “rectify its legal status”.
JERUSALEM — A coalition of Jewish American groups has called on the U.S. government to press Jordan to extradite a Palestinian woman who helped carry out a 2001 suicide bombing that killed 15 people, including two Americans, in Jerusalem.
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran has executed a former employee of the defense ministry who was convicted of spying on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, the country’s judiciary said Tuesday. It was the second such execution in the past month.
BEIRUT — Facing a worsening economic crisis and with little chance of Western or oil-rich Arab countries providing assistance without substantial reforms, Lebanon’s cash-strapped government is looking east, hoping to secure investments from China that could bring relief.
BERLIN, Germany — A 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard has been charged with war crimes during the Holocaust in what could be one of the last cases of its kind, a German court said Monday.
Tehran — Iran said that the misalignment of an air defence unit’s radar system was the key “human error” that led to the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane in January.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Saudi Arabia has issued guidelines for about 1,000 pilgrims who will be allowed to perform the hajj pilgrimage in Mecca later this month, an experience that will be unlike any before because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Dubai — With a “welcome” passport sticker and coronavirus tests on arrival, Dubai reopens its doors to international visitors Tuesday in the hope of reviving its tourism industry after a nearly four-month closure.
The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has touted underground “missile cities,” along the Gulf coastline.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Defense Ministry announced the successful launch of a new spy satellite early on Monday that would help the country monitor Iran’s nuclear activity as its foreign minister hinted that Israel may have been behind a fire that damaged an Iranian nuclear site last week.
