Middle East & North Africa

BEIRUT, Nov. 14 (Xinhua) -- Restaurants, bars, cafes, gyms and malls closed their doors on Saturday as Lebanon entered its first day of a two-week lockdown to restrict the spread of COVID-19.

Vehicles are permitted to drive on specific days based on their plate numbers. However, most of the streets in the capital city Beirut were empty, reported LBCI local TV channel.

Police was deployed in most areas of the country, issuing tickets for people who violate lockdown rules.

JERUSALEM (AP) — When the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations with Israel, the Palestinians decried the move as a “betrayal” of both Jerusalem, where they hope to establish the capital of their future state, and the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the city’s holiest Muslim site.

But with Israel now courting wealthy Gulf tourists and establishing new air links to the major travel hubs of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Palestinians in east Jerusalem could soon see a tourism boon after months in which the coronavirus transformed the Holy City into a ghost town.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Eric Roman struts onstage in his torn jeans and grasps the microphone.

It’s midnight on a Friday and in normal times, he’d hear wild applause from this tightly packed hotel bar in one of the old neighborhoods alongside the Dubai Creek. Sweaty throngs of fellow Filipinos, Arab businessmen and mall employees fresh from their shifts would hit the dance floor as he belted out Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” with his nine-piece Filipino band.

RIYADH, Nov 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pledged to strike extremists with an “iron fist”, after a bombing against a gathering of Western diplomats was claimed by the Daesh group.

The bomb blast struck a World War I commemoration at a non-Muslim cemetery in Jeddah on Wednesday, just two weeks after a guard at the French consulate in the Red Sea city was wounded by a knife-wielding Saudi citizen.

RAMALLAH, Nov 14 (NNN-WAFA) – Palestinian officials slammed U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo’s reported decision, to visit Israeli settlement in the West Bank, calling the planned visit “a challenge to international consensus.”

“The visit will be a challenge to the positions of all previous U.S. administrations, that emphasised the illegality of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories,” said Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh, in a press statement.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Lebanese Security Chief Abbas Ibrahim visited Damascus after a trip to Washington as part of efforts to free U.S. citizen Austin Tice, who is thought to be held in Syria, Lebanese broadcaster al Jadid reported on Saturday.

Ibrahim told al Jadid he went on a two day visit to Damascus and was in regular contact with Tice’s mother to tell her that he would continue to work on her son’s “file”.

“I won’t stop working on this subject and I promised Tice’s mother whom I met in Washington and am in daily touch with on the phone,” he told the broadcaster.

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Two airports in Ethiopia’s Amhara state which neighbours Tigray where federal troops are fighting local forces were targeted by rocket fire late on Friday, the government said, as an 11-day conflict widened.

The airport in Gondar in Amhara state, which neighbours Tigray, was hit on Friday, while another rocket aimed at the Bahir Dar airport missed the target, the government said.

ALGIERS/RABAT (Reuters) - The leader of the Polisario Front, Western Sahara’s independence movement, said on Saturday the group had ended a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco to resume its armed struggle following a border confrontation.

A collapse of the truce, which Morocco has said it intends to stick with, could reignite a long-dormant guerrilla war in the remote desert region and aggravate decades of friction between Morocco and neighbouring Algeria, which hosts the Polisario.

14 Nov 2020; MEMO: Outgoing US Envoy to Syria James Jeffrey has praised Donald Trump's approach in the country and has admitted to lying about the number of US troops in Syria.

In an interview with Defense One, Jeffrey confessed: "We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there."

14 Nov 2020; MEMO: The Moroccan army confirmed in a statement on Friday: "The Royal Armed Forces had, on Thursday night, deployed a security belt in order to secure the flow of goods and personnel through the buffer zone of Guerguerat."