Middle East & North Africa

KUWAIT, Sept 21 (NNN-KUNA) – Kuwait will raise its port security level of facilities, the Kuwait Ports Authority (KPA), said on Friday.

The decision was issued by Khaled Al-Roudhan, Kuwait’s minister of commerce and industry, and state minister for services, KPA said in a statement.

According to the ministerial decree, Kuwait will raise security level of all port facilities in the country.

The decision aims to preserve the security of the country and its territory, as well as, ports, under conditions experienced by the region, the statement said.

MAIDUGURI (Nigeria), Sept 21 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Nigeria’s army has stopped the work of international NGO Action Against Hunger accusing it of supplying militant group Boko Haram with food and drugs.

The army said it had warned the NGO against “aiding and abetting” Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria.

Action Against Hunger, which denies the accusations, says its “life-saving assistance” to vulnerable people has now been put “into jeopardy”.

More than two million people have also been displaced.

Thousands of protesters have marched in major cities across Egypt late Friday demanding the resignation of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Videos posted on social media showed demonstrators chanting "rise up, fear not, Sisi must go" and "the people demand the regime’s fall".

ANKARA, September 20. /TASS/: First Russian S-400 missile systems will be deployed in Turkey as soon as in December, Turkey's Undersecretary for Defense Industries Ismail Demir said Friday.

"S-400 systems will be deployed and activated in December," Demir said.

General Director of the Russian Kontsern Pvo Almaz-Antei Yan Novikov said in late August that training of the Turkish military to operate the S-400 is scheduled to begin on September 1, 2019 and last until January 2, 2020. The second procurement of the S-400 systems is planned for 2020.

20 Sep 2019; MEMO: Iraq announced yesterday that it would not be joining the International Alliance for Safety and Protection of Maritime Navigation in the Gulf, saying that this military force “complicates the political and security situation.”

In a statement the spokesman for the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, Ahmed Al-Sahaf said Baghdad believes the formation of any military force to protect the waterways in the Gulf would further complicate the situation in the region.

20 September 2019; AFP: We know what Neanderthals looked like. Now, thanks to ancient DNA, Israeli scientists have unveiled the appearance of another of our ancient relatives.

Very few clues exist about the lives of the Denisovans -- cousins of Neanderthals -- who went extinct around 50,000 years ago: three teeth, a pinky bone, and a lower jaw.

But that was enough for researchers at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to draw conclusions on their appearance.

20 Sep 2019; MEMO: Benny Gantz, leader of the center-left Blue and White party (Kahol Lavan), on Thursday rejected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to form a government.

KHURAIS, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia on Friday took media to inspect oil facilities hit by attacks that Washington and Riyadh blame on Iran, showing melted pipes and burnt equipment, as Tehran vowed wide retaliation if tensions raised by the strikes boil over into hostilities.

The kingdom sees the Sept 14 strikes on its Khurais and Abqaiq facilities — the worst attack on Gulf oil infrastructure since Iraq’s Saddam Hussein torched Kuwaiti oilfields in 1991 — as a test of global will to preserve international order.

KHURAIS, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - Saudi Aramco is confident full production will resume by the end of September from Khurais, one of two oil sites attacked about a week ago, a company executive said on Friday.

Aramco was shipping equipment from the United States and Europe to rebuild the damaged facilities, Fahad Abdulkarim, Aramco’s general manager for the southern area oil operation, told reporters on a tour organized by the state company.

SANAA, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Saudi-led coalition launched a series of airstrikes early on Friday on Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, targeting four sites which it said used by Yemeni Houthi rebels for assembling remote-controlled boats and sea mines.

In a statement carried by Saudi Press Agency, the coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said the targeted sites in the north of Hodeidah were used by Houthis to carry out "terrorist operations" that threaten shipping lines and the international trade in Bab al-Mandab Strait and in the south of the Red Sea.