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Leaked documents show that Saudi Arabia and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have been lobbying to water down a crucial scientific report on climate change.
News of the lobbying comes just days before the start of the COP26 conference on international action to slow down… Read more
New Covid-19 cases recorded in the Middle East and North Africa averaged 20,176 a day during the past week – the lowest figure for more than a year. Numbers have declined sharply since mid-August when they peaked at 73,000 a day.
Iran, which has been reporting high figures since the… Read more
In April last year a report by the OPCW, the international chemical weapons watchdog, blamed the Assad regime for two sarin attacks on Ltamenah in northern Syria. The implications of this were especially serious because the attacks took place in 2017 – four years after the regime had formally… Read more
Patrick George Zaki: detained as a "security threat"
Patrick George Zaki, a 27-year-old Egyptian, was studying for a postgraduate degree at Bologna University in Italy. In February 2020 he returned to Egypt for a family visit – only to be arrested on arrival at Cairo airport.
Zaki has been in… Read more
Hundreds of people died – many of them in their sleep – when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin hit Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of Damascus, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s and it caused… Read more
Syria's claim that crucial evidence relating to chemical weapons was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes has been greeted with widespread scepticism: it sounds too convenient to be true.
In a diplomatic note to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Syria announced that an… Read more
Two gas cylinders that formed crucial evidence in connection with a suspected chemical attack in Syria have been destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, according to the Syrian authorities.
The cylinders were at the centre of an investigation by the OPCW’s Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) regarding events… Read more
Facebook reported this week that it removed 2,784 accounts in June for "coordinated inauthentic behaviour". Among those, 947 related to countries in the Middle East and North Africa region: Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Algeria and Sudan.
Facebook treats online campaigns as "coordinated inauthentic… Read more
Four tonnes of a chemical supplied by a German firm and supposedly intended for making pharmaceuticals vanished after arriving in Syria, according to a Swiss newspaper investigation. The chemical – isopropanol – has multiple civilian uses but also is a crucial ingredient in the nerve agent sarin… Read more
The Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism is named in memory of a Lebanese-American journalist who died in a car crash while working for Iran's Press TV in 2014. The purpose of the award, according to its website, is to honour non-mainstream journalists who "tell challenging… Read more
ARAB ART ONLINE: Susan Hefuna: Al Sabr Gamil (Patience is Beautiful) 2007. Ink stained on wood 140 x 170 cm. More information | Click to enlarge
