Category: 3. Middle East

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON, Feb 17 (Reuters) – The Vatican will not participate in U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called “Board of Peace” initiative, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomatic official, said on Tuesday while adding…

Weeks after Hamdy Ibrahim left his village in Egypt’s Nile Delta hoping to reach Europe, his brother’s phone rang with a chilling message from Libya: pay now or the boy would die.

A smuggler was on the line, demanding 190,000 pounds ($4,000) to…

AP — Iran says it temporarily closed parts of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf. The move came as semiofficial Iranian news agencies reported live fire exercises in the vital waterway, through which 20% of the…

Settlers reportedly raid Bedouin hamlets in West Bank; no arrests made

Israeli settlers attacked a Bedouin hamlet outside Ramallah as soldiers stood by, Palestinian media and Haaretz report.

The incident began when a settler from a…

BERLIN, Feb 17 (Reuters) – More than 80 actors, directors and other artists who have taken part in the Berlin Film Festival, including Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem, signed an open letter to the organisers published on Tuesday calling for them…

Representatives of the state and the Jerusalem municipality traded blame over the delay in implementing a mandated upgrade to the egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall and restoring its direct access to the wall itself during a…

By Matt Spetalnick, Olivia Le Poidevin and Parisa Hafezi

WASHINGTON/GENEVA/DUBAI, Feb 17 (Reuters) – Even for a U.S. president long fixated on deal-making, Donald Trump’s assignment of his favorite envoys to juggle two sets of negotiations –…