Middle East & North Africa

10 Feb 2021; MEMO: Israeli occupation forces yesterday arrested prominent Hamas member, Khaled Al-Hajj, in the West Bank's northern city of Jenin.

"An Israeli force raided our home in Al-Jabriyat neighbourhood and detained my husband," Al-Hajj's wife told Anadolu Agency, adding that the reason was "unclear".

10 Feb 2021; MEMO: A European Union delegation currently visiting East Africa visited Ethiopian refugees in Um Rakuba, Sudan, to inspect their living conditions and needs.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Emirates Airlines President Tim Clark said on Wednesday Boeing’s 777x jet was unlikely to be delivered before the first quarter of 2024.

Boeing has been developing the widebody jet, a new version of its 777 series, with the goal of releasing it in late 2023, already three years later than planned.

“The 777x was due to come in June of last year, Now it’s unlikely to be, I think, before the first quarter of 2024,” Clark told a virtual summit by aviation consultancy CAPA.

Ankara, Feb 10 (AP-PTI) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan unveiled an ambitious 10-year space programme for his country Tuesday that includes missions to the moon, sending Turkish astronauts into space and developing internationally viable satellite systems.

Erdogan announced the programme, seen as part of his vision for placing Turkey in expanded regional and global role, during a live televised event laced with special effects.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Iraq is determined to recover all antiquities that were stolen after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, official al-Sabah newspaper reported Tuesday, citing a senior Iraqi official.

"The board is determined to recover the first and last Iraqi artifact smuggled abroad, and we will not give up a single piece of it, regardless of its size and importance," Laith Hussein, head of the State Board of Antiquities and Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities, told al-Sabah.

CAIRO/GAZA, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Leaders of a dozen of Palestinian factions, including the two main rivals Fatah and Hamas, concluded on Tuesday a two-day reconciliation dialogue in Egypt's capital Cairo and agreed on cooperation in holding the general elections later this year, the factions said in a final statement after the dialogue.

The agreement will hopefully end a 14-year rift between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah and Hamas that controls the Gaza Strip.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Mendy Moskowits, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Belz Hassidic sect in Jerusalem, doesn’t understand the uproar toward believers like him.

In recent weeks, ultra-Orthodox Jews have defied coronavirus restrictions by holding big funerals for beloved rabbis who died of COVID-19, celebrating large weddings, and continuing to send their children to schools. The gatherings have led to clashes with police and an unprecedented wave of public anger toward the religious community.

BEIRUT, Feb 9 (NNN-NNA) – Lebanese authorities, yesterday, started to ease the total lockdown measures in the country, for the fight against COVID-19, due to the economic and financial crisis.

Lebanese authorities adopted a strategy, aimed at opening the different sectors in the country, in four phases, to avoid big gatherings and a further increase in the number of infections, which have reached 319,917 so far, with 3,616 deaths from the virus.

CAIRO/GAZA (Reuters) - Egypt on Tuesday opened its Rafah border crossing with the Gaza strip until further notice, Egyptian and Palestinian sources said, a move described as an incentive for reconciliation between the main Palestinian factions, meeting in Cairo.

Leaders of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction, which controls the West Bank, and of Hamas, the armed Islamist movement that opposes any negotiations with Israel, began Egyptian-brokered talks on Monday to address long-standing divisions ahead of elections planned for later this year.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates was set to swing into orbit around Mars in the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission Tuesday, the first of three robotic explorers arriving at the red planet over the next week and a half.

The orbiter, called Amal, Arabic for Hope, traveled 300 million miles in nearly seven months to get to Mars with the goal of mapping its atmosphere throughout each season.