Somalia’s al-Qaeda-allied Shebab rebels Saturday mocked a U.S. offer of up to $33 million for tip-offs enabling the arrest of its top leaders, saying they would give 10 camels to anyone who helped locate Barack Obama. The highest price put up by the U.S .State Department on Thursday was for Shebab chief Ahmed Abdi
United Nations supervisors say opposition forces are attacking Syrian government troops as well as the electricity stations supplying power to the Syrian Army bases. They have also bombed six buses carrying the soldiers loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The battles are said to be the fiercest since the beginning of the
European Union diplomats are expressing growing concern at what they see as the increasingly militant stance taken by Turkey’s ruling Islamists. They accuse Ankara of using probes into alleged plots against the government as a tool to jail and silence opponents and compromise the country’s secular credentials by introducing Koran studies in public schools.
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has added to his pre-negotiations demands. After telling Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to choose “between peace and settlements,” he has reiterated his demand for a full construction freeze, but has added demands that Israel release terrorists and add arms to the PA police force. “We recently told them that
The leader of Greece's neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party, Nikos Mihaloliakos, has said during an interview that Istanbul could be restored to Greek control, private broadcaster NTV reported Friday on its website. "Is it realistic to ask for Istanbul, where 15 millions Turks live, while there are only 3,000 Rum [Anatolian Greek]?" Greece's daily Proto
Egypt will try again on Tuesday to set up an assembly to write a new constitution, the parliament speaker said on Saturday, after the previous such body was dissolved for failing to represent all interests following the fall of Hosni Mubarak’s government. The make-up of the constitutional committee has been in deadlock since April
A suspected Islamist stabbed two policemen Friday at an underground station in a Brussels neighborhood where scuffles broke out a week earlier, local media reported. The two victims, a man and a woman who were attacked during a routine check, did not sustain life-threatening wounds, the reports said. The attacker was quickly subdued
Egypt’s prosecutor summoned an Islamist MP for questioning after he was caught performing an indecent act with a teenage girl, an Egyptian daily reported late Friday citing an unnamed security official. “The normal legal procedure in this case is to send the prosecutor’s order to the People’s Assembly [Egypt’s lower house of parliament] on
Hundreds of activists gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Friday to demonstrate against presidential candidate Ahmed Shafiq ahead of a run-off vote, saying they did not want to be ruled by another former military man. Some of those in the square supported Shafiq’s rival Mohammed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, which already controls parliament,
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas warned on Friday that he may seek non-member status for a Palestinian state at the United Nations if peace talks with Israel do not resume, The Associated Press reported. The PA currently has observer status at the UN and an upgrade by the General Assembly to “non-member” would give
