IRBIL: Two rival Iranian Kurdish opposition parties based in northern Iraq have announced in a joint statement their reunification 16 years after they split over internal disputes.

Negotiations between the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran and the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran — both banned in Iran — “led to the party’s reunification,” said the statement issued late on Sunday.

Formed in 1945, the KDPI is the oldest Iranian Kurdish party, but most of its members are based in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

LONDON: The CIA could not find any evidence to support Israel’s claim that six prominent Palestinian rights groups were “terrorist organizations,” intelligence sources told The Guardian. 

Last October, the Israeli government labeled the following groups as terror-related: Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International — Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees.

DUBAI: Summer of 2022 has seen a rash of wildfires, flash flooding, dust storms, and record high temperatures across the planet, which scientists believe are only the latest expressions of man-made climate change.

Experts warn that such extreme weather events will grow in frequency and severity unless the world acts decisively to cut greenhouse gas emissions and ensures that temperatures do not exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

GAZA: Shadi Khail, a scrap collector in the Gaza strip, was killed during Israeli airstrikes this month, leaving his mother, wife and two children destitute.
“He said he was going to collect plastic and sell it and get diapers and milk for the boy. He was never back,” his wife, Asma, said in their three-room house in Gaza City. “He came in a coffin.”

CAIRO: As it prepares to expand to serve a population now exceeding 20 million, the Cairo metro has recruited Egypt’s first female train drivers, a novelty in a country where few women have formal jobs.
Since April, commuters on the network’s newest line have seen women take the controls in the driver’s cab, with reactions ranging from raised eyebrows to outright disapproval, according to the two pioneers.