Middle East & North Africa

22 Mar 2021; MEMO: More than 45,000 housing units are standing vacant in Kuwait due to the repercussions of coronavirus, CSRGulf announced yesterday.

"Real estate companies face major problems, especially owners who have bank loan installments to reconcile, in addition to the delayed rent payments of thousands of expatriate tenants who left and never came back due to travel restrictions," the centre said in a report.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Opposition parties say Turkey is paying a steep price for President Tayyip Erdogan’s wayward economic policies after his shock firing of the central bank governor sent Turkish financial markets reeling.

Erdogan dismissed Naci Agbal on Saturday, two days after the governor raised rates to curb inflation. Erdogan then appointed a critic of tight policy who is expected to reverse recent rate hikes, fuelling fears of political meddling in monetary policy.

23 Mar 2021; MEMO: The Israeli government has said that it will not allow any economic project to be implemented in the occupied territories unless the Palestinian Authority (PA) stops cooperating with the ICC probe into Israeli war crimes, Quds Net said yesterday.

22 Mar 2021; MEMO: Saudi Arabia presented a new peace initiative on Monday to end the war in Yemen, including a nationwide ceasefire and the reopening of air and sea links, but Houthi said the offer did not appear to go far enough to lift a blockade, Reuters reports.

22 Mar 2021; MEMO: Turkey's zero waste project, initiated by Turkey's First Lady Emine Erdogan, has won the UN Development Program Turkey's first (UNDP) Global Goals Action Award, Anadolu reports.

Turkey started the zero waste project in 2017 and it is continuing at full speed as the country aims to free its agriculture from waste.

According to a report, the project also aims to reduce the volume of non-recyclable waste.

22 Mar 2021; MEMO: Israeli soldiers prevented the Palestine TV crew from reporting at Ein Al-Bayda village in the occupied West Bank and forced the media crew to leave the area, reported Wafa news agency.

According to a Wafa correspondent, the soldiers held the Palestine TV van and checked the journalists and crew members' papers before ordering them to leave the area.

23 Mar 2021; MEMO: The US sharply condemned Monday a wave of Russian and Syrian regime airstrikes over the weekend that targeted a hospital and killed several civilians, Anadolu Agency reports.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the coordinates of al-Atareb Surgical Hospital had previously been shared with a UN entity intended to prevent attacks on civilian infrastructure.

22 Mar 2021; MEMO: Tunisian satellite Challenge ONE was launched today from the Baikonur base in south-central Kazakhstan aboard the Russian Soyuz-2.1a rocket which was also carrying other satellites, Xinhua reported.

Challenge ONE was designed and developed exclusively by Tunisian labour and is a small satellite that weighs about three kilogrammes, and will be used in the Internet of Things technology.

23 Mar 2021; MEMO: Israeli authorities continue to ban Palestinian rights activist and Amnesty International campaigner Laith Abu Zeyad from travel to East Jerusalem or abroad, Rai Al-Youm reported yesterday.

CAIRO, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Somalia's Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Mohamed Abdirizak discussed here on Monday means of promoting bilateral cooperation in all fields, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.

"The talks tackled the exerted efforts for developing the cooperation between the two sides in a way that reflects the strong mutual relations," said Ahmed Hafez, spokesperson of the Egyptian foreign ministry.