Media Coverage

A cohort of independent UN experts has called on the Human Rights Council to launch an international investigation into the massive explosion in Beirut two year ago, with a view to securing justice for those who died and were injured. The powerful blast, caused by a stockpile of ammonium nitrate in...

Yemen's warring sides agreed to renew a two-month truce expiring on Tuesday, the United Nations envoy said, despite international pressure for an extended and expanded deal that would build on the longest stretch of relative calm in over seven years. Special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg had been...

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is carrying out one of the largest political arrest campaigns in years against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with at least 94 people arrested over the past two months. Those arrested include university students and journalists, with at least 20 still...

Tunisia has voted to hand sweeping new powers to the country's president, in a move that critics say risks the return of authoritarian rule to the country. Fewer than a third of Tunisians voted in the referendum, with 94.6% of those balloted supporting plans to hand President Kais Saied broad new...

Hundreds of Iraqi demonstrators, most of them followers of the Iraqi Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr, have stormed the parliament building in Baghdad to protest against the nomination for prime minister by Iran-backed parties. No lawmakers were present in parliament when the protesters penetrated the...

Clashes between competing militias in Libya’s capital on Friday killed at least 13 people, despite calls for calm after violence first broke out the previous night, a spokesman for Tripoli’s emergency services said. It was the latest escalation to threaten the relative peace after nearly a decade of...

Lebanon plans to begin repatriating tens of thousands of Syrian refugees within months over objections by the United Nations and human rights groups, a minister has said. Lebanon has one of the world’s highest numbers of refugees per capita and currently hosts approximately 1.5 million Syrians who...

Tunisia’s main opposition leader, Rached Ghannouchi, was allowed to return home after a court hearing in a money-laundering investigation that his Ennahdha party rejects as a political ploy. The preliminary hearing before an investigative judge at a court in the capital, Tunis, lasted nearly 10...

A UN-backed court for Lebanon will sentence two Hezbollah members in their absence Thursday for the 2005 assassination of former premier Rafic Hariri in what could be the tribunal's final act. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL), which is based in the Netherlands, found Habib Merhi and Hussein...

Tunisian judges have launched a week-long strike in protest at President Kais Saied’s “interference” in the judiciary, days after he sacked 57 of their colleagues, accusing them of corruption and protecting “terrorists.” The strike, which began on Monday, is the latest in a series of escalating...