The Latest Breaking News from Asharq Al-Awsat

Iranian security forces rearrested prominent activist and journalist Sepideh Gholian hours after she walked free from jail chanting slogans against supreme leader Ali Khamenei, activists said Thursday. Gholian, 28, was freed Wednesday from Tehran's Evin prison after spending over four years behind bars following a conviction related to her reporting…

UN investigators said Thursday they "have not found that there has been a genocide within Ukraine.” Presenting their first report, the high-level team of investigators said they had determined that Russian authorities had committed "a wide range of war crimes" since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 --…

Rescue teams on Thursday retrieved two more bodies after floods struck two Turkish provinces that were already devastated by last month’s powerful earthquake, raising the death toll in the new disaster to 16. Flash floods caused by torrential rains turned streets in the provinces of Adiyaman and Sanlifurfa into rivers…

Saudi Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman met in Riyadh on Thursday with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak who is visiting the Kingdom, the Saudi Press Agency reported. They discussed global oil markets and the efforts of OPEC+ to promote market stability, SPA said. They also stressed their…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meeting Germany's leaders Thursday on an abbreviated visit that comes in the shadow of tensions over his government's planned overhaul of Israel's judicial system and worries about Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu has meetings scheduled with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany's largely ceremonial president, Frank-Walter…

The spokesman of Tunisia's Ennahda party has been detained, the party said on Wednesday. Abdelfattah Taghouti was detained by a national guard unit on Tuesday evening, Ennahda said, demanding his immediate release. Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) contacted the party but it had no information on the reasons behind the arrest. Authorities…

Several people, including fighters belonging to an outlawed Kurdish insurgency group, were killed in a mysterious helicopter crash in northern Iraq, according to a statement from the Iraqi Kurdish-run counterterrorism service on Thursday. The AS350 Eurocopter crashed in the district of Chamanke in Dohuk province in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region…

Gianni Infantino was re-elected as FIFA president during the 73rd Congress in Kigali on Thursday, promising record revenues in the next four-year cycle of $11 billion as he called for more football to be played around the world. Infantino stood unopposed, making his re-election as head of football's governing body…

Chairwoman of the Russian Federation Valentina Matviyenko started on Wednesday discussions in Algeria with its officials, mainly the scheduled visit of Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to Moscow in May. Meanwhile, President of Eurojust the European Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation Ladislav Hamran has pledged to assist Algeria in its efforts…

The collapse of the California-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) dominated most sessions and workshops of the Financial Sector Conference in Riyadh. The repercussions of SVB’s recent bankruptcy caused shock and confusion worldwide, especially for economies that fear that the crisis will spillover to their financial institutions. Saudi Minister of Finance…

The Pentagon released on Thursday a video showing a Russian military jet intercept a US drone downed over the Black Sea two days ago, in what was the first direct encounter between the world's leading nuclear powers since the Ukraine war began. The rare Pentagon move came a day after…