Middle East & North Africa

24 Nov 2019; MEMO: On Friday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) condemned the escalation of Israeli settlers’ violence against Palestinian citizens and blamed the US for this escalation, Al-Watan Voice reported.

In a statement, the PA’s Foreign Ministry announced that the escalation against Palestinians “is part of an expansionist colonial project which is being carried out by the Israeli settlers and backed by the Israeli occupation.”

24 Nov 2019; MEMO: Iraq’s top Shi’ite Muslim cleric, Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, called on Friday for the politicians in the country to accelerate the reformation of election laws, The New Khalij reported.

Al-Sistani stressed that the reformation of election laws is the only method of ending the turmoil, which has been ongoing in Iraq for weeks.

24 Nov 2019; MEMO: Turkey has issued a red notice for exiled Palestinian MP and dismissed Fatah leader, Mohammed Dahlan, over his role in the failed coup attempt in July, Turkish media reported on Friday.

24 Nov 2019; MEMO: United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced on Thursday that it had received a contribution of $12.5 million from the UAE.

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — Vice President Mike Pence worked to reassure the United States’ Kurdish allies in an unannounced trip to Iraq on Saturday, the highest-level American trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of U.S. forces in Syria two months ago.

Flying in a C-17 military cargo aircraft, Pence landed in Irbil, capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani.

ANKARA, November 23. /TASS/: Turkey and Russia may come to agreement in coming days on setting up observation posts in Syria, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said in an interview with the Qatari Al Jazeera TV Channel on Saturday.

"I believe that the [joint Russian-Turkish] patrols will be even more successful and useful in coming days," the Anadolu news agency quoted the defense minister as saying.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iranian troops and members of the elite Revolutionary Guards helped police quell violent unrest in Kermanshah province this week, Iranian officials said on Saturday, accusing “U.S. agents” of being among the armed protesters.

Rights group Amnesty International said at least 30 people were killed in the western province, making it the worst-hit by days of protests over gasoline prices rises in which more than 100 people were killed nationwide. Iran rejected the death toll figures as “speculative”.

NICOSIA, Nov 23 (NNN-Xinhua) — Greek and Turkish Cypriots joined forces on Friday night in a bid to nudge their leaders towards new peace negotiations to reach a Cyprus reunification arrangement.

After marching in the streets of both the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot sectors of the divided Cypriot capital, delegations handed to the community leaders a petition, expressing concern at the long stalemate in the negotiations and calling for a solution.

BEIRUT, Nov 23 (NNN-NNA) – Russian Ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, slammed the U.S. disruptive role in Lebanon, local media reported.

“What we see in Lebanon today is America’s subversive role in the country and nothing more,” Zasypkin was quoted as saying, by Elnashra, an online newspaper.

The ambassador said that “there are foreign powers taking advantage of the protests happening in Lebanon, to implement their agendas.”

JERUSALEM, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Israel is in the process of making a national plan to become one of the most advanced countries in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), experts said.

"We are now making a national plan that will be submitted to the government to make Israel, within five years, one of the top five leading countries in the world in artificial intelligence technology," Isaac Ben-Israel, head of an Israeli team on formulating a national AI plan, told Xinhua.