Eritrean diplomat asks: ‘Why is the Sudan conflict not an important issue’ for the UN?

NEW YORK CITY: Even as the 78th session of the UN General Assembly came to an end on Tuesday, it was clear that the curtain was not about to come down on the conversations about the tensions between the Global North and the Global South, the UN’s role in an emerging multipolar world order, and the stubborn persistence of conflicts and inequalities worldwide.


Israel’s top court weighs rules on removing prime minister

JERUSALEM: Israel’s top court heard appeals on Thursday against a law restricting how a prime minister can be removed from office, as current Premier Benjamin Netanyahu faces protests against the government’s judicial overhaul.

The hearing got underway as Israel is deeply divided over the judicial reforms, which have triggered one of the country’s biggest ever protest movements against the hard-right government.



Iraqis who fled Daesh blame political rot for tragic wedding fire

HAMDANIYA, Iraq: Iraqi Christians once driven from their village by Daesh are blaming another enemy for an inferno that killed more than 100 of their friends and relatives at a wedding this week: chronic political rot and lax governance.

After returning from years of exile during Iraq’s war with the extremist forces, residents rebuilding their lives in their hometown of Hamdaniya said that where the vanquished terrorists had failed to kill them, corruption succeeded.



Lebanese Armenians scuffle with riot police during protest outside Azerbaijan Embassy

EIN AAR, Lebanon: Hundreds of Lebanese Armenians scuffled with riot police on Thursday outside the Azerbaijan Embassy in northern Beirut during a protest against the Azerbaijani military offensive that recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh from the enclave’s separatist Armenian authorities.
Protesters waved flags of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and burned posters of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the demonstration in the Ein Aar suburb of the Lebanese capital.


Lebanese Army kills van driver smuggling Syrians into the country

BEIRUT: The driver of a van being used to smuggle people from Syria into Lebanon was killed on Thursday after he attempted to run over a soldier from a Lebanese Army patrol that was trying to stop the vehicle. He was identified as Hatem Saleh, 35, a Lebanese citizen from the border town of Mashta Hammoud.