• West Asia

    Tunisian student gets a year in jail for homosexuality

    A Tunisian court has sentenced a student to a year behind bars on charges of homosexuality, in a judgement condemned by local rights groups, AFP reports. The youth had been detained on September 6 in the Mediterranean resort area of Sousse for questioning in connection with a murder after his telephone…

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  • West Asia

    Hundreds killed in hajj stampede in Mecca

    A stampede during one of the last rituals of the Hajj season — the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca — has killed more than 700 people and injured close to 900 others in Saudi Arabia. The stampede occurred Thursday morning during the ritual known as “stoning the devil” in a…

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  • South Asia

    Guantanamo Bay releases ‘Bin Laden bodyguard’

    A Saudi man, Abdul Shalabi, 39, has been transferred back to Saudi Arabia after being freed from Guantanamo Bay, the Pentagon said. Shalabi is said to have once worked as a bodyguard for Osama Bin Laden Shalabi was captured by Pakistani forces in 2001 and sent to the US base in Cuba, where…

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  • West Asia

    Yemen’s president return to Aden

    Yemen’s president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi has returned to the southern city of Aden after six months in exile, his office says. A government source told the Reuters news agency Hadi would spend the festival of Eid al-Adha in Aden before flying to New York to address the UN. He fled Aden…

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  • West Asia

    Russian-Israeli talks over Syrian situation

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has sought to allay Israeli concerns at Russia’s military build-up in Syria. At talks in Moscow, he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Russia’s actions in the Middle East would always be “responsible”. Netanyahu is concerned by the possibility of Israeli and Russian forces inadvertently trading…

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  • West Asia

    British help academics escape war

    A British foundation created in 1933 to help academics flee Nazi Germany started helping Syrian and Iraqi academics escape in the hope that one day they will return and rebuild. In their headquarters in London’s South Bank University, Five full-time employees helped by interns work to make it easier for refugees to…

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  • West Asia

    Ancient Egyptian manuscript pieced together

    During the recent International Congress of Egyptologists in Florence,Wael Sherbiny the Belgium-based independent scholar, unveiled his findings on the oldest Egyptian leather manuscript that has been found in the shelves of the Egyptian museum in Cairo, where it was stored and forgotten for more than 70 years. Dating from the…

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  • West Asia

    Yemen’s exiled government returns to Aden

    Yemen’s prime minister Khaled Bahah and several of hos ministers traveled to Aden from exile in Saudi Arabia, two months after loyalist forces pushed Iran-backed rebels out of the city. “The government has moved its base from Riyadh to Aden,” government spokesman Rajeh Badi told AFP. There was no indication…

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  • West Asia

    Baba ghanoush: Arabic eggplant caviar

    Baba ghanoush or baba ghanoug is a Levantine dish of cooked eggplant mixed with onions, tomatoes, olive oil and various seasonings. The Arabic term means “pampered papa” or “coy daddy”, perhaps with reference to a member of a royal harem. The name has become integrated in the Middle-Eastern kitchen that…

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  • West Asia

    Binladin Group’s projects halted after Mecca mosque disaster

    Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has issued a decree halting all Saudi Binladin Group construction projects in the kingdom until a full investigation of last week’s deadly crane collapse at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, a report on state-run Saudi Arabian radio said. On Friday, a construction crane…

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