AL-MUKALLA: British authorities have appointed lawyer and diplomat Abda Sharif as the UK’s new ambassador to Yemen.
She will take up her post in September and succeeds Richard Oppenheim, who will move to another diplomatic role, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said.
Sharif’s most recent position was head of the Iraq and Arabian Peninsula Department in the Middle East and North Africa Directorate at the FCDO. Between 2012 and 2016, she served as deputy ambassador to Lebanon. Before that, in 2011, she led the UK Office in Benghazi, Libya.

ISTANBUL: Turkish authorities on Tuesday seized and jailed a 16-year-old youth for drawing a moustache on an election campaign poster showing re-elected President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, media reports said.
Several media close to the opposition, including daily newspapers BirGun, Cumhuriyet and private TV station Halk TV, said the youth from the southeastern town of Mersin was accused of defacing the poster near his home with a pen, scribbling “a Hitler moustache and writing insulting comments.”

CAIRO: Abdel Fattah El-Sisi arrived on Wednesday in Angola at the start of a tour that also includes Zambia and Mozambique.
El-Sisi, the first Egyptian president to visit Angola, met his counterpart Joao Lourenco in Luanda and witnessed the signing of a number of agreements between the two countries.
Lourenco said that the relations between the two countries were important.

LONDON: Every month, women and girls living in camps for displaced people face a common challenge — one that, despite being a natural occurrence, disrupts their daily lives in everything from queuing for meals to participating in social life.

Long a relatively neglected health issue, aid agencies say that poor access to menstrual hygiene management products impacts the lives of millions in the world’s crisis-hit regions, deepening gender inequality.

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s former president Michel Aoun has traveled to Syria to shore up relations with Damascus after his party rejected Hezbollah’s preferred presidential candidate.

The Free Patriotic Movement said Aoun, its leader, “traveled on Tuesday to Damascus on a visit during which he will meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.”

It came days after the FPM announced it backed opposition candidate Jihad Azour for the Lebanese presidency and rejected Hezbollah’s preference Suleiman Frangieh, who is a close friend of Assad.