Middle East & North Africa

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The tiny, energy-rich Arab nation of Qatar announced on Monday it will withdraw from OPEC in January, mixing its aspirations to increase production outside of the cartel’s constraints with the politics of slighting the Saudi-dominated group amid the kingdom’s boycott of Doha.

The surprise announcement from Qatar’s minister of state for energy affairs, Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, again throws into question the role of the cartel after needing non-members to push through a production cut in 2016 after prices crashed below $30 a barrel.

2 Dec 2018; DW: Israeli police on Sunday recommended Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted in a corruption case involving the country's telecommunications giant Bezeq.

Police said they have enough evidence to show Netanyahu and his wife Sara accepted bribes and committed fraud and breach of trust.

What we know so far:

Netanyahu is accused of pushing regulatory benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Bezeq in exchange for positive coverage from subsidiary news site Walla.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police on Sunday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery charges, adding to a growing collection of legal troubles that have clouded the longtime leader’s prospects for pursuing re-election next year.

Netanyahu denied the latest allegations. But his fate now lies in the hands of his attorney general, who will decide in the coming months whether the prime minister should stand trial on a host of corruption allegations that could play a central role in next year’s election campaign.

30 Nov 2018; AFP: Damascus Friday accused Israel of striking Syria, in what a monitor said were the such first missiles to hit the country since an air defence upgrade after the downing of a Russian plane in September.

The Syrian regime claimed its air defence systems shot down all "hostile targets" late Thursday. Israel did not confirm carrying out raids but denied any losses.

30 Nov 2018; DW: Archeologists in Algeria have found stone tools and butchered animal bones from as far back as 2.4 million years ago. Such implements appear to have spread from East Africa earlier than scientists first thought.

Humans may have started using stone tools to butcher animals far earlier — and in a different part of the world — than first thought, a team of paleoanthropologists claims.

Damascus, Nov 30 (AFP) Israeli jets on Thursday bombed several areas near Damascus as well as in southern Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

"Israeli forces bombarded for an hour positions in the southern and southwestern suburbs of Damascus as well as in the south of Syria at the border of Quneitra province," the Observatory's chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Earlier, Syrian state media said air defences downed a number of "hostile targets" close to the capital.

RIYADH, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday to provide 50 million U.S. dollars to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).

According to Saudi Press Agency, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabeeah, supervisor general of King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center (KSrelief), and Pierre Krahenbuhl, commissioner general of the UNRWA, co-signed in Riyadh a memorandum for the grant.

TEHRAN, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Iran is ready to export indigenous fighter jets, a senior Iranian army commander said Monday.

"We have already taken necessary steps to export (our) products," Abdoklarim Banitarafi, head of Iran Aviation Industries Organization, was quoted as saying by Press TV.

Iran plans to sell its trainer jets as well, he added.

Banitarafi made the remarks ahead of the opening ceremony of an air show in Iran's southern Kish Island on Monday.

Iran unveiled its first indigenous fighter jet, Kowsar, in August.

TEHRAN, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- At least 634 people were injured in the magnitude-6.4 earthquake that hit Kermanshah province in western Iran on Sunday, Tasnim news agency reported on Monday.

There has been no death report in the quake so far, the report quoted Mahamoud Reza, president of Medical Science University of Kermanshah province, as saying.

SANAA, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- A mother and her five children were killed in a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in Yemen's northwestern province of Hajjah on Monday, local residents and medics said.

Three others from the same family were wounded in the air raid which hit their house in Yamanah village of Haradh district in the morning.

A day earlier, four people were killed and five others injured when a coalition airstrike hit a fuel station in Mastaba district in the same province, which borders Saudi Arabia.