TRENTON, Canada – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took aim at gun control, including a national freeze on handguns, because it is “the responsible thing to do.” Speaking at a press conference, Trudeau cited the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting where six worshippers were killed and 19 wounded by a lone gunman as an example o...
ANKARA – NATO “will chart the way ahead for the next decade” at its June summit in the Spanish capital Madrid, the alliance’s chief has said. “We will reset our deterrence and defense for a more dangerous world,” Jens Stoltenberg said at a ceremony in Spain marking the 40th anniversary of the country’s accession to […]
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AA) – Somalia is experiencing its worst drought in decades, approaching famine-like conditions, the special presidential envoy for drought response has said. Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame said 6.1 million Somalis are facing an extreme level of food insecurity while 330,000 children are facing severe acute malnutrition...
PARIS – France has demanded an urgent investigation into the death of journalist Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff, who was allegedly killed during a bombing campaign by Russian forces in Ukraine. Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who is on an official visit to Ukraine, described the death of the 32-year-old, who worked for French news channel B...
ANKARA – The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has called on the Muslim leaders to defend Al-Aqsa Mosque after the Israeli settlers’ incursions into the sacred precincts. In a statement issued late on Sunday, the IUMS Secretary-General Ali Al-Qaradaghi said the Muslim Scholars “strongly condemn these provocative attempt...
GENEVA – A new round of meetings involving the Syrian Constitutional Committee seeking a solution to the ongoing war in Syria has started in Geneva. Members of the “Small Group” responsible for writing the constitution, consisting of 15 representatives from the Bashar Assad regime, non-governmental organizations, and the Syri...
JERUSALEM (AA) – Israel will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Egypt and the European Union (EU) in the coming weeks to export natural gas to EU countries, the country’s energy minister said on Monday. Karine Elharrar told the Israeli Army Radio that Israeli and European teams are working on setting cooperation between them [&helli...
PARIS (AA): Lu Shaye, China’s ambassador to France, has said that NATO’s expansion eastward led Russia to launch the Ukraine war, accusing the West of trying to ‘contain’ Beijing and Moscow. “For the Chinese, the (root) cause (of the war) is NATO’s five cycles of eastward expansion … it constitutes a military and security threat [&...
BELGRADE, Serbia (AA) – Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday held a ceremony to honor the 26 victims of the 1992 Ferhadija massacre in the capital Sarajevo. Relatives of the victims and politicians participated in the ceremony to mark the 30th anniversary of the massacre. Dozens of people laid wreaths and prayed at the monument built [&helli...
WASHINGTON (AA) – The situation in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is increasingly tenuous amid mounting settlement expansion, violence, Palestinian evictions and demolitions of Palestinian-owned properties, the UN warned on Thursday. “I’m extremely concerned that current dynamics, particularly in the occupied West Bank, could...
