Author: Zaghlool al-Uddin

Iraq is poised for a significant increase in its natural gas production, with new projects awarded to several foreign companies expected to add nearly 84.95 million cubic metres per day to the nation’s output. This development was announced by the Iraqi Oil Minister, Hayan Abdel Ghani, highlighting a major stride in the country’s energy sector. In a recent statement, Abdel Ghani noted, “We expect the projects that have been undertaken by foreign firms and those to be carried out in those concession areas to produce nearly 84.95 million cubic metres per day of gas.” This increase is a part of…

Israeli forces have killed eight Palestinians, including a child, in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, taking the total number of Palestinians killed in the West Bank to 239 since October 7. Israeli forces shot dead five Palestinians in the city of Jenin late on Saturday and early Sunday, and killed three others elsewhere in the West Bank, the ministry said on Sunday. Six other Palestinians were injured in the Israeli raid in Jenin. Palestinian news agency Wafa said Israeli forces stormed Jenin “from several directions, firing bullets and surrounding government hospitals and the headquarters…

Valencia, Turin, Madrid (28/11 – 25) Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia retained his MotoGP world title with many records; there are nevertheless signs that the Ducati rider will face sterner competition next season. The Italian rider won the 2023 season-ending MotoGP Grand Prix in Valencia on Sunday to clinch his second world title in a row. The protege of Valentino Rossi becomes the third rider to take back-to-back MotoGP titles since the introduction of the class in 2002. Only Valentino Rossi and Marc Marquez previously managed to do that. Bagnaia is the first rider to successfully race and defend #1 in the…

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Secretary of State Antony Blinken took his diplomatic push on the Israel-Hamas war to the occupied West Bank on Sunday, trying to assure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the Biden administration was intensifying efforts to ease the plight of Gaza’s civilians and insisting that Palestinians must have a main say in whatever comes next for the territory after the conflict. Blinken later flew to Baghdad for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as American forces in the region face a surge of attacks by Iranian-allied militias in Iraq and elsewhere. U.S. forces shot down…

Trade and investment connections between Russia and Iraq have a long and intricate history. During the Middle Ages, merchants and explorers from both regions interacted, traversing through the Volga trade route and the Caspian Sea, establishing early trade networks between what would much later become Russia and Iraq​. Formal diplomatic relations were established on September 9, 1944, and despite a brief severance between 1955 and 1958, the relationship between the two countries flourished, with Baghdad being viewed as a significant Soviet partner in the Arab world​. The post-Soviet era saw a rekindling of Russia-Iraq ties, particularly in 2008, when Russia,…

Paris, Frankfurt (13/10 – 42) Twenty-First Century technology has a way of speeding everything up – often overdriving events beyond human control. Exhibit “A”: the internet. Hamas and its supporters were undoubtedly aware of the multiplication impact of social media when they mounted their recent murderous attack on a “peace party” along the Israeli border (twist the irony dial); Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intent on a blanket reprisal on the Palestinians, apparently does not care what the internet thinks, says or reports. It is perplexing to the simple-minded when there are no “good guys” in a fight. Note how the…

A former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has said the country is enforcing an apartheid system against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Tamir Pardo has become the latest former senior Israeli official to claim Israel’s treatment of Palestinians amounts to apartheid, a reference to the system of racial separation in South Africa that ended in 1994. “There is an apartheid state here,” Pardo said in an interview with the Associated Press news agency, published on Wednesday. “In a territory where two people are judged under two legal systems, that is an apartheid state,” Pardo said, joining a small but…

The latest Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank last month has been described as a “massacre” by local officials and residents and condemned by the United Nations, but it is far from unique in scope and brutality. In a statement published on Saturday to mark World Humanitarian Day, UN humanitarian coordinator Lynn Hastings said 77 healthcare workers were injured and 30 ambulances damaged while trying to help people in the occupied territory so far in 2023, whether during raids or protests or just on average days. First responders – non-governmental organisations working with volunteers, doctors,…

TEHRAN — The Iranian and Pakistani governments announced the signing of a bilateral trade agreement Thursday as Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and a high-ranking delegation were in Islamabad on a three-day visit.  The document, according to Iran’s Fars news agency, will cover a period of five years and aims to raise the countries’ annual trade volume to $5 billion, more than twice the current figure. The deal came in line with a foreign policy drive by Iran, which has been seeking similar long-term partnerships to revive its sanctions-hit economy. In just the past two years, Tehran has inked similar agreements with China…

THE WHITE HOUSE — President Joe Biden on Tuesday assured Israel’s president that the friendship between their countries is “just simply unbreakable,” amid Washington’s concerns over events in Israel, including the leadership’s push to amend the judicial system and recent settler violence in the West Bank. Those words came during President Isaac Herzog’s second visit to Biden’s White House, an honor not yet accorded to the nation’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who began his sixth term in December. “As I affirmed to Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday, America’s commitment to Israel is firm,” Biden said. “And it is ironclad. And we’re committed,…