Latest Middle East News
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Iran bars Rafsanjani Mashaei from election
This combination of eight pictures shows eight candidates approved Tuesday, May 21, 2013 for Iran's June 14 presidential election to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who cannot run again because of term limits, clockwise from left: Mohammad Gharazi, Mohsen Rezaei, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, Gholam Ali Haddad Adel, Saeed Jalili, Ali Akbar Velayati, and Hasan Rowhani, taken between May 9 and May ...
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Syrian rebels put up fierce resistance in Qusair
This citizen journalism image provided by Qusair Lens, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows Syrian citizens inspecting the rubble of damaged buildings that were damaged from a Syrian forces air strike in the town of Qusair, near the Lebanon border, Homs province, Syria, Tuesday, May 21, 2013. Several members of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group ...
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Opposition demands guarantees Assad will quit
National Coalition – which Khatib has left – would be "the legitimate representative" of Syrian opposition forces in any negotiations. "Bashar Assad and his security regime are not a part of any transitional phase, and they have no role in Syria’s future," the document said, adding that there needed to be "international guarantees" for his ...
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Russia opposes forced Syria regime change
Hezbollah in Syria and the potential regional fallout, Zasypkin also assured that Russian missiles supplied to Syria will not reach Hezbollah. "I don’t know the details of the contracts [for supply of weapons to Syria] but I can confirm that the contract states those missiles must not reach a third party," he said. "Our utmost priority is stability and security in ...
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Jordan’s border clampdown shuts out refugees
U.N. figures show. All four unofficial crossing points used by refugees trying to escape bombardments in the southern province of Deraa have been closed for the past six days, refugees and aid workers say, although the official frontier post at Jaber remained open. They said Syrian families trying to pass into Jordan from the rebel-held border villages of Nasib and Tel Shehab had been turned ...
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Egypt tourist arrivals rise but not by enough
Egypt rose in the first four months of 2012, the Cabinet said Tuesday, but analysts say the sector is still suffering from the aftermath of the country’s 2011 uprising. The revolt that ousted ...
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Weekly Commentary Walking through the Peace Index Poll
Weekly Commentary: Walking through the Peace Index Poll Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 16 May 2013 The Peace Index is a project of the Evens Program for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute. This month's survey was conducted by telephone on April ...
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Fierce fire breaks out in Karachi Pakistan
Fire rages at a building of a chemical factory in southern Pakistani port city of Karachi on Oct. 28, 2012. A fierce fire broke out at a chemical factory in Gul Bai area of Karachi on Saturday night. No casualties have been reported. ...
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Romney helps people in hurricane-hit area
With less than a week to go before Election Day, Mitt Romney -- after several days dominated by talk of Hurricane Sandy -- will try to make the most of the few campaign days he has left. His campaign ramps back up Wednesday after canceling events and dialing back rhetoric because of the superstorm. Romney held an event at an arena here Tuesday that was initially scheduled as a rally, but the ...
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Egypt passes new tax law in bid for economic reform
according to the Associated Press , describing the measure as one that will shift the burden on the poor to that of the nation's struggling small business sector. As for the nation's powerful and wealthy elite, the new law won't touch ...
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Iran blocks ex-President Rafsanjani from election race report
Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (C) arrives to register his candidacy for the upcoming presidential election at the interior ministry in Tehran on May 11, 2013. Reports say Rafsanjani has been blocked from running in the next election. (Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty ...
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Rafsanjani a Founder of Irans Revolution Is Rejected as Candidate
TEHRAN ...
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After deadly day new attacks in Iraq kill 13 people and wound dozens officials say
An Iraqi policeman runs his metal detector over the body of Mohammed Adnan, 22, at a checkpoint as the body arrives for burial in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Monday, May 20, 2013. A wave of car bombings across Baghdad's Shiite neighborhoods and in the southern city of Basra killed and wounded dozens of people, police said. (AP Photo/ ...
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UN says it sees a major drop in number of Syrian refugees arriving in Jordan unsure why
GENEVA - U.N. officials said Tuesday that the number of Syrian refugees arriving in Jordan has suddenly fallen from an average of 2,500 a day to fewer than 20, and they are trying to quickly figure out why. Millions of people have been displaced in Syria as the civil war there has engulfed large areas, and Jordan has become a main refuge for Syrians who choose to flee their country. U.N. ...
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New Evidence of Iran Support to Assad
May 21, 2013 7:43pm The United States has new evidence that Iran and Hezbollah have direct involvement with the Syrian regime, a senior State Department official told reporters traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry in Oman. The official said that, according to the Free Syrian Army, Hezbollah and Iranian fighters have been helping the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad in Qusayr, ...
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Carney says U.S. condemns Hezbollah support of Assad regime
Hezbollah 's efforts to help the Assad regime win the civil war in Syria is a concern to the United States and its allies, a White House spokesman said Tuesday. Press ...
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Russia opposes the initiatives of the west to create a no-fly zone over Syria the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Tuesday. Unfortunately these destructive ideas keep popping up over time but no one ever bothered to think a
Russia opposes the initiatives of the west to create a no-fly zone over Syria, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said on Tuesday. "Unfortunately, these destructive ideas keep popping up over time, but no one ever bothered to think about the consequences," said Gatilov. It is worth mentioning that on March 19, the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty ...
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Two Key Candidates Barred From Seeking Irans Presidency
Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani's candidacy for the country's presidency was rejected Tuesday by the powerful Guardian Council. He's seen here on May 11 registering his candidacy for the June 14 ...
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Third Time Wasn’t The Charm John Kerry Returns To The Middle East For A Fourth Go-Round
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry , embarking on yet another trip to the Middle East, where he has already been three times since assuming office at the end of ...
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UNICEF donates school kits to Palestinian refugees
Toulkarem School in the Palestinian camp of Burj al-Barajneh, in the presence of students, parents and teaching staff. "Education is a priority for both UNRWA and the Palestinian refugee community and this will remain so, despite the ongoing humanitarian crisis of Palestinian refugees from Syria," said Roger Davies, the deputy director of UNRWA affairs in Lebanon. Davies thanked ...
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Protesters condemn Hezbollah’s Syria role
Beirut Tuesday to condemn Hezbollah’s role in the Syrian conflict, after the party’s widely publicized intervention in the battle of Qusair claimed the lives of dozens of fighters. Around 30 people, mostly students, held signs decrying Hezbollah’s actions while calling for the country’s leaders to make a stand against the party. "We condemn Hezbollah’s ...
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Saipem awards Oceaneering Egypt offshore deal
Italian oil and gas industry contractor Saipem has awarded Oceaneering International the contract to supply umbilicals for the Burullus West Delta Deep Marine Phase IXa development located offshore Egypt. The order includes 10 subsea production control umbilicals totalling approximately 84km in length and two electrical power cables totalling around 55km in length. The project is set to be ...
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DSI awarded $460m contract in Saudi Arabia
Dubai-based Drake & Scull International has announced its general contracting unit has won a SR1.73bn ($460m) contract from Lamar Investment and Real Estate Development Co in Saudi Arabia, Zawya Dow Jones has reported. DSC Saudi Arabia will oversee and undertake construction work on the Lamar Towers project in Jeddah, the company said. The project, halted in 2009, was restructured and ...
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Chevron close to offloading downstream assets in Egypt
Chevron Corp is in advanced talks to sell its downstream assets in Egypt and Pakistan, with the planned disposals seen raising around $300m for the US energy firm, Reuters has reported. The energy firm has received at least three non-binding bids for the assets from interested parties, which include regional and international energy companies, one of the sources said, declining to provide ...
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Oman warns firms against violating midday break rule
Oman's manpower ministry has warned of legal action against private sector companies who are found to be flouting norms regarding the midday break for construction workers during the months of June, July and August, Muscat Daily has reported. "Work should be stopped for three hours, from 12.30pm to 3.30pm, during these three months," said the director general of labour welfare at ...
Middle East Focus
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Israel and Palestine as one country?
Peace in the Middle East, it’s as illusive now as it was ten years ago and ten years before that. For many commentators, peace in the Middle East has become a myth, something local and international governments strive for or claim to support without any real hope of realization of the goal. With the current impasse between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ongoing, an old theme is being kicked around again, that of a single state that incorporates Israel and Palestine.
A single state solution is an idea that grew up in the 1920s and then died with the Six-Day War when divisions between the newly-founded Israeli state and the rest of the region were too entrenched for the idea to retain any traction. The political landscape after the war and even today is what many Jewish groups feared when Jewish Zionists were calling for a return to the biblical homeland to develop a Jewish state. Read more
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