Middle East & North Africa

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: Egypt’s Minister for Information Affairs called on Saturday for journalists and the media to shift their agenda in line with the “interests” of the Egyptian people, Al-Watan Voice has reported.

Osama Haikal said that Egyptians under 35 years old – 60 to 65 per cent of the population – do not read newspapers or watch TV so it is important for journalists to reflect this in their output. His comments provoked a sharp backlash from journalists who called on the minister to resign.

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: The leader of the Maronite church in Lebanon, Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al-Rai, on Sunday urged the country’s political elite to stop delaying parliamentary deliberations on forming a new government.

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews have challenged the Israeli government’s restrictions to combat the coronavirus and attended educational institutions across the country on Sunday.

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: A senior Hamas official has claimed that the US has told a number of Arab states to stop giving financial support to the Palestinian Authority, Al-Aqsa TV reported on Sunday. According to Saleh Al-Arouri, a number of states have been asked to put pressure on Fatah, which controls the PA, in order to pull out of any reconciliation with Hamas.

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: The Turkish intelligence services have arrested a Palestinian man suspected of spying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Arab nationals living in Turkey.

A senior Turkish security official, who asked not to be named, on Friday disclosed that the man confessed to spying on Arab citizens and provided a set of documents that prove his association with the UAE intelligence service.

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: The Israeli occupation authorities control 36 areas in Area C of the occupied West Bank and is planning to convert them into settlements and military camps, Jordanian Assabeel newspaper reported on Sunday.

19 Oct 2020; MEMO: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has documented a sharp increase in Israeli demolition of European Union (EU)-funded Palestinian projects built in occupied territories, a report issued over the weekend revealed.

According to the report, which was circulated by world news agencies, in 2019 the Euro-Med monitor documented a record high of 204 Palestinian structures that Israel had demolished in East Jerusalem alone, representing a spike when compared with previous years.

ANKARA, October 18. /TASS/: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed Russia, the United States, and France are supplying weapons to Armenia.

"What are they saying about our support to our Azerbaijani brothers? What are the Minsk three - the United States, Russia, France - saying? They support Armenia. They offer all possible support in terms of weapons," he said on Sunday.

CAIRO, Oct 18 (NNN-MENA) – Egyptian Foreign Minister, Sameh Shoukry, held talks yesterday, with his Spanish counterpart, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, on bilateral relations and regional issues, and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU), for political consultation.

In a later, news conference, the two ministers said that, their talks addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Syrian and the Libyan crises, and other regional issues of mutual concern.

JERICHO, West Bank (Reuters) - Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Israel on Sunday for treatment of a worsening case of COVID-19, the Palestine Liberation Organization said.

Witnesses said Erekat, 65, was on a stretcher when he was placed inside an Israeli ambulance outside his home in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. Erekat, who is also secretary-general of the PLO, disclosed on Oct. 8 that he had contracted coronavirus.