Middle East & North Africa

14 July 2019; MEMO: An Egyptian minister has claimed that Egypt is to establish a “Ministry of Happiness” in light of the country’s soaring prices of basic commodities and the continued repression and imprisonment of thousands of opposition figures.

14 July 2019; AFP: Freed after years in jihadist captivity, Jihan faced an agonising ultimatum: abandon her three small children fathered by an Islamic State fighter or risk being shunned by her community.

"Of course I couldn't bring them home. They're Daesh (IS) children," said Jihan Qassem matter-of-factly, sitting in a sparse concrete structure she now calls home.

TRIPOLI, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Libyan coast guards on Saturday rescued 53 illegal immigrants off the coast of the city Sabratha, some 60 km west of the capital Tripoli.

"A coast guards patrol rescued 53 illegal immigrants on a rubber boat 40 miles off Sabratha coast," said a statement issued by the Libyan Coast and Ports Security Department.

The migrants, who are of different African nationalities, include 10 women and one child, the statement said.

BAGHDAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU)'s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said on Saturday that the EU supports Iraq's proposal to hold peace conference to ease tensions between the United States and Iran.

Mogherini, the EU's high representative for Foreign affairs and Security Policy and European Commission vice president, made her comment during a joint press conference with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Hakim during her official visit to the Iraqi capital Baghdad earlier in the day.

CAIRO, July 13 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities opened on Saturday the 4,600-year-old Bent Pyramid at Dahshur royal necropolis in Giza province southern the capital Cairo to visitors for the first time after its restoration and reparation works have been done.

The pyramid belongs to Old Kingdom's Pharaoh Sneferu, and it was named as the "Bent Pyramid" or "the Pyramid with Two Angles" for having two different angles of inclination from base to top.

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Tens of thousands of Sudanese flooded the streets of the capital of Khartoum and other cities Saturday to mark the 40th day since the deadly dispersal of a protest sit-in, and a protest leader said a planned a meeting with the country’s ruling generals to sign a power-sharing deal was postponed until Sunday.

The “Justice First” marches were called by the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which has been spearheading the protests since December. Those demonstrations led to the military ouster of autocratic president Omar al-Bashir in April.

13 July 2019; DW: Police said the four crew members of the Grace 1 are still under investigation. Their release came as the UK said it would send a second naval frigate to the Persian Gulf amid escalating tensions with Iran.

Police in the British territory of Gibraltar on Friday released all four crew members of an Iranian tanker that was detained on suspicion of illegally transporting oil to Syria.

BAGHDAD, July 13 (Xinhua) -- A total of nine Islamic State (IS) militants were killed on Saturday in an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, the Iraqi military said.

Acting on intelligence reports provided by Nineveh's Operations Command, the coalition aircraft attacked an IS position at a valley in the western part of the province, the media office of the Joint Operations Command said in a brief statement.

GAZA, July 12 (Xinhua) -- At least 40 Palestinians were injured, including 22 with live ammunition, on Friday during clashes with Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel, medics said.

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the Health Ministry in Gaza, told Xinhua that at least 40 Palestinian demonstrators were injured, including 22 shot by Israeli soldiers' gunfire, one of whom was a child that was seriously injured in the abdomen.

BEIRUT (AP) — Two months of intensive airstrikes by Syrian government forces and their Russian allies, coupled with a fierce ground assault on rebel-controlled Idlib province, have killed hundreds of people and caused massive displacement while achieving little to no gain for President Bashar Assad.