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World Brief | Middle East Gunman Kills Four in Bank in Southern Israel
An unemployed former security guard shot and killed four people in a bank in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba on Monday hours after the bank had refused his request for financial assistance, the police said. The gunman committed suicide after holing up in the bathroom of the bank with a female hostage for about an hour. The hostage escaped unharmed. The gunman, who lived nearby, had ...
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This is Syrias great chance for change | Jonathan Steele
National Co-ordination Body for Democratic Change promoted the Geneva idea and will attend keenly. The Syrian National Coalition, which is backed by western governments as well as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is still reluctant to turn up without a commitment that Assad's departure is assured. To their credit, British and other western diplomats are urging them not to boycott and thereby ...
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Obama voices concern to Lebanon on Hezbollah role in Syria
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told his Lebanese counterpart on Monday he was concerned about Lebanese Hezbollah militants fighting in Syria to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the White House ...
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5 Dead in Bank Robbery in Israel Man Commits Suicide as Police Raid Building
Three women and two men were left dead after a botched bank robbery in Israel's southern city of Beersheba. The robbery occurred around noontime at Bank Hapoalim, according to reports. An additional three people were also injured.Investigators are still unclear about the number of robbers involved in the crime. One of the bank robbers, who had taken a female hostage, turned the gun on ...
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Israel contests France TV over Palestinian boys death
29/03/2013 19:15 CET Israel says there is new evidence that a French television report whose harrowing images helped inspire the second Palestinian uprising was unfounded. The report in 2000 showed a father and son in Gaza caught up in Israeli-Palestinian crossfire. The 12-year-old was later pronounced dead – hit, said France 2, by Israeli troops. Nearly 13 years later, the Israeli ...
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Seychelles tourism pledges support to Qatar Airways
Minister Alain St.Ange, the Seychelles Minister of Tourism and Culture, met Mr. Akbar Al-Bakar, the CEO of Qatar Airways, at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) Qatar Airways stand when he was in Dubai for the 2013 ATM tourism trade fair. Since his appointment to the Office of Minister in Seychelles, this was the first opportunity for Minister Alain St.Ange and the CEO of Qatar Airways to discuss ...
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US deeply concerned by prosecution of political speech in Egypt urges government to act
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is calling on the Egyptian government to rein in prosecutions of political expression amid what it called a "growing trend" of efforts to punish and deter people from speaking their mind. Ahead of a planned meeting this week between Secretary of State John Kerry and Egypt's president, the State Department said Monday that it was "deeply ...
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A look at the deadliest attacks in Iraq since the 2011 US troop pullout
BAGHDAD - Here is a look at the deadliest attacks in Iraq since the withdrawal of U.S. troops on Dec. 18, 2011: -- May 20, 2013: A wave of attacks, some at markets and rush hour crowds, hour killed at least 86 people in Shiite and Sunni areas. -- May 18, 2013: Shootings and bombings kill at least 16 people including an anti-terrorism police captain and his family. -- May 17, 2013: Bombs rip ...
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Syriac patriarch blames West for mess in Syria
Email article The patriarch of Syria's Catholics has said Western nations are responsible for the carnage in Syria, where the morale of Christians is "very, very low". Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan said the present situation in Syria is the result of Western nations carrying out a geopolitical strategy "to split Syria and other countries" in the ...
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Too Soon to Tell The Case for Hope Continued
Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home -- and of despair. And like despairing people everywhere, whether in a personal depression or a political tailspin, these activists believed the future would look more or less like the present. If there was nothing else they were confident about, at least they were confident ...
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How Baghdad Fuels Iraqs Sectarian Fire
The Iraqi government has hurled the country to the brink of a new civil war. In under a month, Baghdad launched a vicious assault on a Sunni protest camp, resulting in 44 deaths; executed 21 alleged Sunni terrorists in one day, and suspended the licenses of 10 satellite channels, 9 of them deemed pro-Sunni. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s message to his country’s extremely ...
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The Dark Side of Irans Drug Policy
How Iran Won the War on Drugs ," Amir Afkhami argues that the Iranian government has been successful in addressing the country’s drug problem by treating dependency and reducing the harm drugs cause, rather than by cracking down on supply. Afkhami further suggests that Iran is a model for the region, and that nearby countries such as Afghanistan have much to learn from its ...
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Obama Foreign Policy Inaction Proves Costly in Benghazi and Syria
One hundred and fifty four years after Dickens published "A Tale of Two Cities," we again face both the absurdity and the honor of the humans involved. The two cities in this tale are Benghazi and Damascus. As the world and American press engage in mental gymnastics over minimalist arguments, the firestorm far above these issues rages violently. These pygmy issues are myriad: Did the ...
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Iran Russia Hezbollah Top Backers in Syrian Regimes Success
The protracted fighting in Syria is not happening within a bubble, amid reports of clandestine support for the Bashar al Assad regime from Hezbollah, Iran and Russia, and an ongoing effort to establish an international peace ...
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Dozens of Hizbollah members killed in Syria activists say
BEIRUT // Fierce street fighting in Qusayr has killed at least 28 members of Lebanon's militant Hizbollah group, activists said yesterday, as Syrian government forces pushed to retake the strategic, opposition-held town near the Lebanese border. More than 70 Hizbollah fighters had been wounded in the fighting around the town, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. If ...
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Reinforcements sent to Egypts Sinai
EGYPT sent police reinforcements to the Sinai after an attack on a police camp in the wake of the kidnapping of security personnel, officials say. In Cairo, all options were on the table to secure the release of the three policemen and four soldiers held last week in the lawless peninsula, the presidency said. Eighty Central Security (riot police) units and 26 armoured personnel carriers were ...
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Israel Palestinians still arguing over epic image
In this Sept. 30, 2000 file image from television, Jamal al-sutra signals his position while protecting his 12-year-old son Mohammed al-Dura, as they shelter behind a barrel from crossfire near Netzarim Jewish settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. More than a dozen years later, the death of a Palestinian boy allegedly shot by Israeli troops in Gaza continues to stir emotions on both sides of ...
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US to stop gold sales to Iran
Gold bars are on display at the "Gold" exhibit in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The US is going to stop all transfers of gold to Iran. The U.S. is trying to stop the gold rush to Iran in a bid to undermine the Islamic Republic's plummeting currency, but critics say the move is more likely to hurt ordinary citizens than the rogue regime's leadership.A ...
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9 killed in attacks against mosques in Iraq
/enpproperty--> BAGHDAD - At least nine people were killed and 53 others wounded in bombing attacks against two Shiite mosques in Iraq's southern city of Hilla on Monday, a police source said. A suicide bomber blew himself up at Al-Wardiyah mosque in Hilla, some 100 km south of Baghdad, while a bomb exploded in the nearby Al-Galagh mosque, the source told Xinhua on condition of ...
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Saudi Arabia inks pact to protect Philippine maids
MANILA--The Philippines said Monday it had signed a historic agreement with Saudi Arabia that would protect thousands of Filipina maids from being exploited in the Middle Eastern ...
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Egypt faces social pressure to cease selling of alcohol
CAIRO--Egypt's liquor stores are under growing pressure to stop selling alcohol, they say, not from the country's Islamist government, but from society ...
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State Secy Kerry Tackles Benghazi Syria
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry promised Monday the Obama administration will do everything possible to protect U.S. diplomats serving overseas, vowing to spare no expense in the effort. "The dangers of diplomacy are not unique to this moment in time: our diplomatic missions didn't become dangerous that night in Benghazi," Kerry told a group of State Department trainees. ...
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Blasts and shootings claim 90 lives in Iraq as sectarian violence rises
Iraq is edging closer to all-out sectarian war between Sunni and Shia Muslims as a series of car bombings and shootings killed at least 90 people and left many others ...
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Middle East a hot topic as McCully meets Kerry
Foreign Minister Murray McCully met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington early today (NZ time) and most of their meeting was spent discussing the Middle East. Mr McCully offered New Zealand's support towards the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians, which could take the form of New Zealand peacekeepers taking part in an international force to run a buffer zone between ...
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The killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah in Gaza became the defining image of the second intifada. Only Israel claims it was all a fake
One of the most evocative and shocking episodes of the second Intifada, the shooting of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy by the Israeli army, was staged. Indeed, Mohammed al-Durrah was not even injured in the incident. Those, at least, are the findings of an investigation by the Israeli government, published today, which has described the case as a "blood libel on the state of ...
Cairo Discussed
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Cairo leading new wave in literature
The publishing industry in Cairo is undergoing a profound change that may have implications for the day-to-day life of Egyptians for years to come, it is a kind of revolution in literature that may one day put Cairo on the map, nestled among those other publishing powerhouses, New York, London, and Chicago primarily, but also regional publishing centers like Johannesburg, Mumbai, and Sydney.
Cairo is already a literature producing city, but it is more commonly associated with Arabic texts, and these pieces of literature are further associated with sweeping assessments of society, societal change, politics and religion on a macrocosmic level. Traditionally, there has also never been much of a local market for literature in Cairo or wider Egypt, leading to an old saying that books are written in Cairo, but published in Beirut and then read in Baghdad. Read more
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