Morocco

RABAT, Oct 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A member of Morocco’s governing coalition said it would join the opposition ahead of a reshuffle requested by King Mohammed VI, citing disagreements with its partners in government.

Senior Progress and Socialism Party (PPS) members, announcing the decision following a majority vote of the party’s central committee, decried a “democratic deficit” in Morocco and cited “backtracking” from a new 2011 constitution under which the king was to devolve more powers to parliament.

13 Sep 2019; MEMO: The US State Department has decided to sell anti-tank missile systems, worth $776 million, to Morocco.

This came in a statement published on the website of the Defence Security Cooperation Agency of the US Department of Defence yesterday.

4 Sep 2019; MEMO: Moroccan authorities found the body of a man who disappeared during the floods which struck the country last week, raising the total number of victims to eight.

On Wednesday, floods covered a football field in the village of Tizirt, during a match between two local amateur teams, killing seven people. An eighth person went missing and a ninth was injured.

28 July 2019; DW: The migrants were plucked from several inflatable boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and returned to Morocco. The rescue came a day after one of the deadliest migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean this year.

The Moroccan navy has rescued 242 migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Spain in dinghies.

19 July 2019; DW: Three men have been sentenced to death in Morocco for beheading two Scandinavian women in December. Twenty other defendants were sentenced to various terms in prison.

Three men have been convicted of terrorism and sentenced to death by a court in Morocco for the murder of two Scandinavian women on a hiking trip in the High Atlas Mountains.

RABAT, June 22 (Xinhua) -- The Peace and Security Council of African Union (AU) will gather in the Moroccan seaside town of Skhirat on Monday, the Moroccan Foreign Affairs Ministry announced Saturday.

This three-day gathering, held ahead of Morocco's upcoming presidency of the Council, will examine the peace-building actions in Africa, the working methods of the Council and the challenges of crisis management and conflict resolution in Africa, a ministry statement said.

RABAT, June. 14 (Xinhua) -- Moroccan Younes M'Jahed was elected on Thursday as the new president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said a report by Asharq al-Awsat news webstie on Friday.

The vote took place at the 30th Congress of IFJ in Tunis from June 11 to 14.

This is the first time that an Arab and African journalist is elected to this position.

M'Jahed was recently elected as President of the National Press Council in Morocco.

Three Moroccan associations today called for a sit-in in front of parliament on Friday to protest efforts to pass the US’ “deal of the century” on the settlement of the Palestinian issue.

In a joint statement, the National Action Group for Palestine, the Moroccan Association for the Support of the Palestinian Struggle and the Moroccan Commission for the Support of the Nation’s Issues said that the stand will be organised under the slogan “the option of resistance and confrontation of normalisation”.

29 May 2019; AFP: US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner met Morocco's King Mohammed VI on Tuesday in Rabat as part of a fresh push on a long-promised but yet-to-be-delivered peace plan for the region.

The trip -- which will also include stops in Amman and Jerusalem -- comes amid a flurry of other administration moves to shore up alliances with Arab allies against Iran and the deployment of warships and bombers to the region.

RABAT, April 21 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Moroccans rallied in the capital Rabat on Sunday to demand the immediate release of jailed activists in Rif protests.

Organized by several opposition political parties and rights associations, the demonstrators strongly denounced the upholding of the sentence of dozens of protesters, which is up to 20 years in prison over the protest that rocked the north-eastern region of the kingdom in late 2016 and 2017.