Middle East & North Africa

25 Jan 2023; MEMO: Hamas has said that Benjamin Netanyahu's statements regarding the Palestinian presence and construction in the occupied West Bank constitute an official declaration of the annexation and Judaisation of Area C. The Israeli prime minister's comment that "Palestinian building [in Area C] … will not be tolerated" coincided with Israel's demolition of Al-Araqib in village in the occupied Negev for the 212th time.

25 Jan 2023; MEMO: An Israeli group is collecting tax-exempt donations from Americans for Jewish extremists convicted of terrorism, committing hate and racist crimes against Palestinians and Israeli citizens.

TEHRAN, January 24. /TASS/: Iranian-Russian cooperation has expanded quite well over the past year and will broaden significantly during the implementation of the seventh five-year development plan (2022-2026), Speaker of the Iranian Majles (parliament), Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said when summing up the results of the third meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Commission on Cooperation between the State Duma and the Parliament of Iran, which took place in Tehran on Monday.

ADEN, Jan 24 (NNN-YPA) – A bomb explosion hit a Yemeni government forces vehicle yesterday, in the country’s southern province of Abyan, killing at least two soldiers and wounding five others, a military official said.

The bomb was planted by Yemen-based al-Qaeda militants, on the roadside in Mudiyah district, and detonated with a remote-controlled device, killing two soldiers on the military vehicle, the local military official said, adding, four others and an officer were critically injured.

ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- After five consecutive below-average rains, the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa is expanding and deepening, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) has warned.

Combined with insecurity and macroeconomic volatility, the impact of the drought on food and nutrition security has been devastating, the WFP said in its regional drought response plan for the Horn of Africa issued late Monday.

Across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, an estimated 22 million people are now acutely food insecure because of the drought, the WFP said.

TEHRAN, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Two police officers were killed early Tuesday in an attack by several "thugs" in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan, Iran's official news agency IRNA reported.

The two police officers, identified as Mokhtar Momeni and Abouzar Omidvar, were assaulted at around 02:00 a.m. local time (2230 GMT) when patrolling with their colleagues at the entrance to Bampur County, Police Commander of the province Mohammad Qanbari was quoted as saying.

The "thugs" fled the scene after the attack, according to Qanbari.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise trip to Jordan on Tuesday to meet with King Abdullah II for the first time in over four years, seeking to shore up ties that have strained since he took office at the helm of Israel’s most right-wing government in history.

23 Jan 2023; MEMO: Israeli is angry that EU and other Western envoys visited Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem last Wednesday without prior coordination with the occupation authorities, Israel Hayom reported on Sunday. According to the newspaper, the delegation included around 30 diplomats from EU countries, Canada, Australia and Argentina.

24 Jan 2023; MEMO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked Shas Chairman Aryeh Deri as Minister of the Interior and Health Ministries on Sunday in order to comply with a High Court of Justice ruling, Israeli media have reported. The court ruled last Wednesday Deri is unfit to serve as a minister in the Israeli government due to his criminal record.

23 Jan 2023; MEMO: Israeli ministers from the far-right Religious Zionism party boycotted the cabinet meeting on Sunday claiming that the evacuation of an illegal settler outpost in the occupied West Bank was done in violation of coalition agreements.

A spokesperson for Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the head of the party, said, "We do not intend to continue as normal, and we are weighing additional steps."