Middle East Experience

During his tenure, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played a major role in the Abraham Accords.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: Mike Pompeo appointed to Council for a Secure America advisory board

Houston: At least eight people were crushed to death and many more injured after fans surged toward the stage during the opening night of the Astroworld music festival on Friday.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: At least eight killed, many injured in crush at Texas music festival

The magnificent artwork was opened to the public for the first time last week.
Source: Jerusalem Post
Full Article: An etrog, a lion and all the secrets of 1,300-year-old mosaic in Jericho

Few leaders have seen their fortunes turn as dramatically as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel laureate now accused of human rights abuses whose officials asked residents to secure the capital against a potential assault by rebel forces.What went wrong, according to close observers, was Abiy’s failure to navigate the deep ethnic divisions that have consumed Africa’s second-most-populous nation since the 1960s. Now, isolated by the US and Europe, his own future suddenly looks much more tenuous.It’s just a month since Abiy won elections and less than a year since he declared military victory over the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the ethnic-based party whose forces now threaten Addis Ababa and which dominated Ethiopia until Abiy took office in April 2018.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.It’s also just two years since the former military officer won the Nobel Peace Prize for signing a treaty with neighboring Eritrea, to end a stalemate that followed a 1998-2000 border war. At the time, he was hailed in the US and European Union as the best hope for bringing democracy and a market economy to Ethiopia, as well as to spread stability in a turbulent neighborhood that runs from Sudan to Somalia.Abiy’s reforms have since stalled. Not only are the TPLF now seizing swathes of territory from outmatched federal forces, a wider civil war could be unfolding. The Oromo Liberation Army, a guerrilla force drawn from former ethnic Oromo supporters, has joined the attack on the government.“Abiy inherited a fragile country and handling issues like the Oromo nationalist demands and protests that brought him to power was a really big challenge,” said William Davison, senior Ethiopia analyst at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank. “To do all that without causing friction required a lot of political skill, which the prime minister proved not to have.”Creating a more unified national state from an ethnically fractured one -- a process Abiy calls “synergy” -- had support at the start, says Davison, whom the government has expelled from the country without explanation. But “he tried to create a party around himself to the exclusion of anyone who has different views, returning Ethiopia to a system in which much of the opposition is criminalized.”Looming bloodbathEven in Addis Ababa, ethnic divisions would make any attempt at civil defense a bloodbath, said a businessman in his 40s who runs trucks to Amhara, the province north of the capital now largely occupied by the TPLF, and who asked not to be identified.Mehdi Labzae, a researcher from the French university Sciences Po, said that this week in Bahir Dar, capital of Amhara province about 300 miles northwest of Addis Ababa, he saw large numbers of buses carrying militia fighters to the front lines of the conflict with the TPLF.US State Department spokesman Ned Price urged all sides to show restraint at a daily briefing Wednesday. He said Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, special envoy for the Horn of Africa would visit Thursday and Friday amid concern at “the growing risk to the unity and the integrity of the Ethiopian state.”The seeds of conflict were sown early, marked for many Tigrayans by the peace deal with Eritrea, which they saw instead as a military alliance between Abiy and the TPLF’s mortal enemy, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. Eritrean forces later played a central role in the government’s military operations in Tigray.Emperor’s palaceFor some Oromo, it was the day before Abiy got his peace prize, when he opened the refurbished palace of 19th century Emperor Menelik II. The prime minister’s office said at the time it should symbolize Ethiopia’s “ability to come together for a common goal.”Yet Menelik is remembered by many Oromo as a warlord whose troops mutilated Oromo women. They, like the TPLF, saw Abiy’s appeals for unity as a cynical bid to centralize power.“Abiy betrayed the Oromo nationalist cause,” said Awol Allo, a senior lecturer at the Keele University in the UK and a staunch supporter of Abiy in his early days. “While he was invoking these liberal ideas for the economy and democracy, he was also consolidating power.”A turning point came in December 2019, when Abiy dissolved the former, ethnically based ruling coalition known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. The Prosperity Party that Abiy created in its place had a pan-Ethiopian vision and, according to Allo, as a result also had little chance of competing against the nationalist parties that dominate in Ethiopia’s 10 ethnically based provinces. That, Allo said, forced the prime minister to suppress opposition and centralize power further.Conflict was triggered after Abiy delayed elections scheduled for last year, citing the Covid-19 pandemic. The TPLF decided to go ahead with the vote in Tigray regardless.Rights abusesOn Wednesday, the United Nations published an investigation that accused government forces -- as well as the TPLF and troops Abiy enlisted from Eritrea -- of abuses that could amount to war crimes during their yearlong conflict.The US suspended duty free access for the country’s exports on Tuesday. The EU had cut budgetary aid late last year and investors are fleeing.The yield on Ethiopia’s $1 billion of Eurobonds rose 158 basis points on Wednesday to a record 16.31 percent, up from 6.09 percent when Abiy took office.Abiy remains in power and may well survive. But a military analysis by Janes, a defense publication, assessed his toppling as increasingly likely unless he negotiates with rebels he has designated as terrorists.The prime minister showed little sign of doing so Wednesday, saying in a statement to commemorate the start of the Tigrayan conflict that: “We will bury this enemy with our blood and our bones, and uplift Ethiopia’s dignity.”Read more:Ethiopia PM says there is ‘sacrifice to pay’ as Tigray forces advance on Addis AbabaEthiopia rebels, opposition form political body against PM AbiyEthiopia compares Tigray forces to ‘rat’ as war marks one year
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: How Ethiopia PM Abiy Ahmed went from Nobel Peace prize to Tigray crisis

Dubai’s civil defense teams put out a fire that broke out at an oil waste disposal unit in Jebel Ali's Industrial Zone on Monday, authorities said.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.No casualties or injuries have been reported.“The incident is under control and there are no injuries,” Dubai Media Office tweeted.People took to Twitter, posting pictures and videos of the incident, with one stating that he saw dark smoke rising from the nearby Expo 2020 site in Dubai.According to Dubai Media Office, the “heavy smoke [was] due to the burning of oil waste.”Read more: Explosion, fire at Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi Refinery result in minor injuries
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Fire breaks out at oil waste disposal unit in Dubai’s Jebel Ali, no injuries reported

A Kuwait member of parliament has submitted a bill to impose a tax on expatriate remittances, according to a report by local media.For all the latest headlines follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Kuwaiti newspaper Arab Times reported earlier this week that MP Osama al-Menawer submitted the bill, which mandates banks and financial institutions that process expat’s remittances to collect tax on money transferred out of the country.The newspaper reported that the tax amount would be no lower than “five percent if the transferred amount exceeds 50 percent of the annual income of the expatriate worker,” adding that Kuwait’s Ministry of Finance will specify the exact amount.The MP also reportedly followed up on a previous decision issued, calling for the termination of contracts of expats above the age of 60, according to Arab Times.In August, Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior was set to limit the number of vehicles expats can register, as security sources said many own several cars and practice unlicensed trading and selling of vehicles.According to a report, hundreds of expats in Kuwait own more than fifty cars each, as they practice the trade of buying, selling and leasing, without a license to do so, which prompted the General Traffic Department to study the legalization of limiting expat car ownership.In March, it was reported that over 200,000 Kuwait-based expatriates lost their residencies in one year after being stranded abroad and unable to return to Kuwait due to the coronavirus pandemic.Read more:Kuwait: Over 200,000 expats lose residency permits in one yearKuwait to limit number of vehicles expats can register under their nameKuwait minister launches initiative to regulate expat workers, ‘change demographics’
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Kuwait MP submits bill to impose tax on expat remittances: Report

Colin Powell, the first black US secretary of state and top military officer, died on Monday at the age of 84 from COVID-19 complications, his family said in a statement.Read the latest updates in our dedicated coronavirus section.“He was fully vaccinated. We want to thank the medical staff at Walter Reed National Medical Center for their caring treatment. We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American,” Powell’s family said in a post on his Facebook page.As a four-star Army general, he was chairman of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War in which US-led forces expelled Iraqi troops from neighboring Kuwait.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.Powell, a moderate Republican and a pragmatist, later served as secretary of state under President George W. Bush.“General Powell is an American hero, an American example, and a great American story,” George W. Bush said as he announced the nomination of Powell, the son of Jamaican immigrants who became the Republican president’s secretary of state in 2000.“In directness of speech, his towering integrity, his deep respect for our democracy, and his soldier’s sense of duty and honor, Colin Powell demonstrates... qualities that will make him a great representative of all the people of this country.”But he found it hard to live down his infamous February 2003 speech to the United Nations Security Council about the alleged existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the evidence he presented was later proven to be false.“It’s a blot... and will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now,” Powell said in a 2005 interview with ABC News.Tributes nevertheless poured in from Congress, where Democratic Senator Mark Warner praised Powell as “a patriot and a public servant,” while House Republican Peter Meijer described him as a rarity in the modern age: “a true soldier statesman.”Read more: Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell endorses Democrat Joe Biden for presidentLeaked Colin Powell emails show loathing for Trump
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Former US Secretary Colin Powell dies of COVID-19 complications

Iran and Venezuela will sign a 20-year cooperation agreement in the coming months, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said during a joint press conference with his Venezuelan counterpart in Tehran on Monday.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.The long-term agreement between the two countries will be signed during a visit by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to Tehran in the coming months, Iran’s official IRNA news agency cited Amir-Abdollahian as saying.He did not give any details about the contents of the agreement.“All this is a confirmation that the relations between the two countries are on a growing path,” Amir-Abdollahian said.Venezuelan Foreign Minister Felix Plasencia Gonzalez also met with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Monday, IRNA reported.The oil sectors of Iran and Venezuela, members of OPEC, are both under US sanctions.Iran in March concluded a 25-year cooperation agreement with China. Last week, Tehran said it is ready to sign a similar agreement with Moscow.“The initial arrangements of this document, entitled the Global Agreement for Cooperation between Iran and Russia, have been concluded,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said, adding that Tehran hopes the document will be signed in the coming months.Read more:Iran says ready to sign Russia strategic partnership, similar to one with ChinaIranian supertanker to set sail from Venezuela with heavy crudeEU’s Borrell ‘optimistic’ about possible upcoming Iran nuclear talks
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: Iran to sign 20-year cooperation agreement with Venezuela in coming months: FM

The EU will not hold talks with Iran to revive the abandoned 2015 nuclear deal on Thursday in Brussels, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday.“We are at a critical point in time for the JCPOA [Iran nuclear deal]… Everybody is determined to bring the JCPOA on track, so we are working hard to go back to Vienna,” Borrell told reporters.“No, next Thursday there is not going to be a meeting as far as a I know… We made clear to the Iranians that time is not on their side and its better to go back to the negotiations table quickly,” he added.For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.This contradicts Iran’s announcement that its lead nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri, would go to Brussels for discussions on Thursday.The EU has been trying to restart negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal which was abandoned after former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord in 2018.Negotiations over reviving the nuclear accord have stalled since the election of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in June.Since taking office, Raisi appointed several other hardline officials to his cabinet in a move experts say is intended to pressure the US into making concession in the nuclear talks.US Secretary of State Antony Blink said in September that time was running out for Iran to return to the nuclear deal.Read more:EU fails to secure commitment from Iran to resume nuclear deal negotiations: ReportIran not ready to resume Vienna talks, wants to discuss texts first: EU officialUS, EU, Israel adopt tough tone on Iran, mull options
Source: Al Arabiya
Full Article: EU says no nuclear talks with Iran on Thursday in Brussels, contradicting Tehran

The stories making headlines on #TheRoundUp this Monday 🎙️ Sheikha Moza highlights QF feats and challenges 🇦🇫 Qatar evacuates Afghan university students ❌ Experts warn parents against Squid Game 🏁 Losail International Circuit gets ready for Qatar GP..
Source: Albawaba
Full Article: The Round Up | 18 October 2021 – Doha News | Qatar