Yemen’s former Aden governor, who has declared a council that seeks secession for southern Yemen, said late on Friday a referendum on independence would be announced soon.Aidaroos al-Zubaidi, who governed Yemen’s main southern city of Aden until he was sacked at the end of April by fugitive president Abd-Rabbu Mansur Hadi, made his announcement during […]

Syrian government and allied forces have taken the eastern town of al-Mayadeen from the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group, a Syrian military source said on Saturday, further weakening the militants’ diminishing presence in Syria.Al-Mayadeen, near the Iraqi border in Deir al-Zor Province, had become a major base for IS militants as they were being driven […]

A Labour government would ban exports of British-made weapons to all members of the US-backed Saudi bombing campaign against Yemen, Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow minister for peace has told Middle East Eye.“We should not be selling weapons to any state that uses, or could potentially use, weapons we supply for internal repression or for foreign wars,” […]

A group of psychologists and mental health professionals on Saturday marched through New York calling for President Trump to be removed from office.The group —which included more than 100 psychologists and mental health professionals— are pushing for Trump to be ousted from his post, according to The New York Post, The Hill reported.“We can sense […]

Wild elephants have trampled sleeping Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, killing three children and a woman in the second such incident since the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Myanmar in just a few weeks.More than 530,000 refugees from Myanmar have fled to Bangladesh over the last two months since attacks by Rohingya militants […]

The presidents of Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan have held talks to defuse an escalating crisis in Kirkuk province, as the Baghdad-imposed deadline for Kurds to leave military positions in the disputed oil-rich region expired.A meeting between Iraqi President Fuad Masum and his Kurdish counterpart Masud Barzani was underway in Sulaymaniyah after a deadline set by […]

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Sunday that President Donald Trump had instructed him to continue diplomatic efforts to calm rising tensions with North Korea, saying “those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.” Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Tillerson downplayed messages that Trump had previously posted on Twitter suggesting […]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced a regional vote test Sunday, after winning a fourth term with a disappointing showing that has forced her to embark on high-stakes coalition talks.Three weeks after German voters handed Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union its worst result in decades, the leader of Europe’s biggest economy is locked in another poll battle […]

The Spanish government has secured opposition support for dissolving Catalonia’s Parliament and holding new elections there in January in its bid to defuse the regional government’s push for independence.The Socialists, the main opposition, said on Friday they would back special measures to impose central rule on the region to thwart the secessionist-minded Catalan government and […]

Iraq’s top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Friday called on the government to protect the Kurdish population in northern Iraq.Sistani’s call, issued at the Friday prayer in the holy Shia city of Kerbala by one of his representatives, came amid reports of abuses against Kurds in Kirkuk and other areas taken by Iraqi […]