Speaker of the House of Representatives, Ageela Saleh, has called on members to convene an official session next Tuesday at the HoR’s official seat in...

The Minister of Economy and Trade published Decision No. 493 of 2026 on the regulation and control of export operations.The Ministry says this comes a...

Strung several metres overhead, the nets are a low-cost solution in sensitive areas prone to attacks by armed groups.

Only one point separates Group A1 leaders France and second-placed Belgium before Monday's clash.

Two residents in Mekelle tell the BBC pro-government forces have taken control of the city.

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The Yemeni president's announcement comes amid an exchange of strikes between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition.

State police and the country's security agency are looking into the co-pilot, who attempted to take control of a Flydubai plane travelling to Israel.

Is Ethiopia repeating its oldest mistake? Submitted by Yunus Turhan on Thu, 10/01/2026 - 16:33 When past leaders have tried to govern from a single centre, the country's peripheries have united in opposition Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed attends a meeting in Moscow, Russia, on 25 September 2025 (Evgenia Novozhenina/AFP) On Ethiopia’s history has come back to haunt it.  Late last month, seven armed groups - among them the Fano militia in Amhara, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Oromo Liberation Army - announced the formation of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival, and vowed to remove Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.  Within days, Tigrayan forces had seized the airports in Mekelle, Axum and Shire, and opened fronts in Afar and Amhara. By 25 September, phone and internet lines in Tigray were cut. This time it was the TPLF, not Addis Ababa, that ordered the blackout. Most commentary reads the new conflict as the collapse of the Pretoria agreement, a 2022 peace deal to end two years of war. But the story is much older than the Pretoria process and Abiy himself. For nearly two centuries, Ethiopian politics has swung between a centre that wants to command, and regions that insist on ruling themselves. Each time the pendulum has pushed hard towards the centre, the peripheries have found a way to unite against it. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); After the Zemane Mesafint (“Era of the Princes”) in the 18th and 19th centuries, when regional lords ran their own affairs, Tewodros II tried to rebuild the empire by the sword. The provinces revolted one after another, and in 1868, he died at Magdala, his army reduced to remnants. Similarly, former emperor Haile Selassie’s 1962 dissolution of the Eritrean federation turned a small insurgency into a 30-year war. The Derg regime pushed centralisation to its limits, and fell in 1991 to a coalition of ethno-regional groups, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).  The 1995 constitution swung back by creating ethnic federalism and, in Article 39, even a right to secession. Yet the EPRDF ran that system through party discipline from Addis Ababa, so self-rule stayed largely on paper.  In short, Ethiopia’s state structure has swung between centralisation and decentralisation over 170 years. Tensions unresolved Abiy assumed power in 2018 by preaching Medemer, an approach of reconciliation and national unity in the face of ethnic divisions. But it quickly began to unravel in 2019, when he dissolved the EPRDF to form his Prosperity Party.  (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Tensions long kept under wraps soon boiled over, and to contain them, Abiy returned to the tools of his predecessors: mass arrests of suspected opponents, and new restrictions on the media. War with the TPLF followed in 2020, fought alongside forces from Eritrea and Amhara. After the Pretoria agreement in 2022, Abiy disbanded the regional special forces, which pushed the Fano militia into open revolt. The status of Welkait and Raya, claimed by both Amhara and Tigray, was left unresolved after Pretoria, so both sides felt cheated. The coalition now marching against Abiy is largely made up of the forces with which he won the last war What made such an unlikely alliance possible? The answer lies less with the rebels than with the centre’s own choices. Each centralising step cost Abiy a partner.  Eritrea, kept away from the Pretoria table, watched its old enemy survive, and then heard Addis Ababa speak of a Red Sea port in terms Asmara read as a claim on Assab. The special forces decision did the same to Amhara.  In short, the coalition now marching against Abiy is largely made up of the forces with which he won the last war.  Can the new alliance muster the capacity to challenge Abiy’s rule? This is not likely, at least for the time being. The alliance has named no joint military commander, and unlike 1991, it has no dominant force able to march on the capital.  Abiy has a drone fleet the Derg never had, along with a fresh mandate from the public, as his party won 438 of the 501 contested seats in parliament (nearly 90 percent) this past June. But some groups have rejected the results, and voting did not take place in Tigray, which comprises 38 constituencies. The road ahead Three paths seem possible from here for Abiy. In the first, he peels Amhara away with concessions over Welkait, while the TPLF’s seizure of airports enables him to present it as the aggressor. The price is that any Welkait deal with Fano locks Tigray into permanent war, so dividing the alliance on one front deepens the other.  In the second, the war settles into a stalemate: the centre holds the cities and the skies, armed movements hold the countryside, and Ethiopia drifts towards a de facto confederation run by men with guns - a Zemene Mesafint by other means.  The third is the most dangerous. Abiy has a record of seeking a unifying cause abroad when pressed at home; once it was the Renaissance Dam (where Egypt is a factor), and today it is access to the sea. This time, a move towards Assab would turn a civil war into a war with Eritrea, and pull in every regional power watching. The regional map explains why that third path cannot be dismissed. The fault lines of Sudan’s war now run through Ethiopia. On one side sits the UAE, Abiy’s main supporter since 2018, whose drones are widely credited with turning the last war, and which analysts accuse of routing arms through Ethiopia to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. Gold, arms and mercenaries: On UAE's shadowy networks in Sudan Read More »  Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December 2025, widely seen as brokered by Abu Dhabi, and President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Addis Ababa in February tied Ethiopia’s hunger for the sea to Emirati-Israeli designs for the Red Sea.  On the other side, Egypt, which regards the Renaissance Dam as a threat to its survival, has built an axis with Eritrea and Somalia, and backs Sudan’s army, with Saudi Arabia reportedly drawing closer to Asmara.  A simultaneous rift with Egypt and Eritrea would carry a heavy price for Abiy Ahmed's government, since Addis Ababa would then face hostile fault lines to both its north and its east. Cairo has pledged troops to the African Union mission in Somalia, and Eritrea has already placed itself at the heart of the dispute by severing diplomatic relations with Ethiopia altogether. Hemmed in on both flanks, Ethiopia would depend almost entirely on Djibouti, which already handles close to 90 percent of its trade. For Ahmed, a war on several fronts would revive what Otto von Bismarck called his "cauchemar des coalitions", the "nightmare of coalitions" in which France and Russia might join forces and drag Germany into a two-front war. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Fighting at home while quarrelling abroad would be the worst of all scenarios for Addis Ababa, once the military costs, the strain on debt relief and the human toll are counted together. For Cairo, an Ethiopia tied down at home is leverage on the Nile. For Abu Dhabi, a collapsing Ethiopia would mean losing its most valuable partner on the mainland. Both camps thus have reasons to feed the war, yet neither has much interest in a clear winner. That is how civil wars become proxy wars.  This is where Turkey matters. It brokered the Ankara Declaration between Ethiopia and Somalia in December 2024, while holding its largest overseas base in Mogadishu, and has mended ties with both Cairo and Abu Dhabi in recent years. This gives Ankara a rare ability to speak to both camps. As his room at home narrows, Abiy may well knock on Ankara’s door again. Ethiopia’s prognosis therefore hinges on Abiy’s next move: whether he adopts collaborative, win-win strategies towards his opponents, or clings to a zero-sum game. In making that choice, he would do well to look back, for Ethiopian history is clear on one point: the state has held when power was bargained with the regions, and it has cracked whenever power was imposed on them.  The reason is simple. Once power has been devolved to the peripheries, it can rarely be recentralised without resistance - and this is precisely the lesson Abiy must now come to terms with. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. Politics Opinion Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:29 Update Date Override 0

Toilet seats, toys and hair clips: The strangest items Israel still barred from Gaza Submitted by Maha Hussaini on Fri, 10/02/2026 - 10:51 A year after the ceasefire, Palestinians still struggle to find everyday items as restrictions keep basic and non-essential goods off the market Palestinians go about their daily lives amid rainfall in Gaza City on 1 October 2026 (Mohammed M Skaik/JNA Press via Reuters) Off A toilet seat is all that stands between Dima Awad and moving out of her makeshift tent before winter. The 48-year-old Palestinian mother has rented a small garage in western Gaza City and has already moved most of her belongings there. But she cannot move in until she finds a toilet seat, something that has become increasingly difficult to find in Gaza.  The basic item is among a range of essential goods that Israel continues to prevent from entering the besieged enclave. “I paid the rent around 10 days ago, and I’ve been looking for a proper toilet at an affordable price for about two weeks now,” said Awad, who now lives with her only son after being separated from her husband, who travelled for treatment during the genocide. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); “Of course, there is no way to find a new toilet seat at an affordable price right now. The second-hand ones are also unsuitable and still expensive.” Due to their scarcity, toilet seats in Gaza now cost between 1,500 and 2,000 shekels ($486-648). “I have done everything possible to move from my tent so that we wouldn’t get soaked by rainwater like we did last year. But the garage I found doesn’t have a toilet, so we have to build our own,” Awad told Middle East Eye. “I consider the garage rent affordable after all the other unaffordable apartments I tried to rent. It costs around 600 shekels ($194) a month. But now I have to find a toilet that costs twice as much as the rent.” A ghost list of barred items Following the imposition of its blockade on the Gaza Strip in 2007, Israel barred or restricted the entry of numerous items, classifying them as “dual-use” goods that could potentially be used for military purposes. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); These included construction materials, water and sewage pumps, electrical equipment, generators, medical equipment, wheelchairs, crutches and other items needed for basic civilian life. In the first two years of the genocide that began in October 2023, Israel sealed Gaza’s crossings and severely restricted the entry of commercial goods and humanitarian aid, including food, medicine, fuel and other essential supplies. Under the October 2025 ceasefire agreement, Israel was required to lift its restrictions and facilitate the flow of international humanitarian aid into Gaza.  'We are being left without either the essentials or the non-essentials' - Imad Sersawi, Palestinian father  Yet, nearly a year later, vast restrictions remain, including on medicine, shelter, reconstruction materials, and other essential and non-essential items. A range of everyday civilian and humanitarian items continue to be denied entry under what aid workers have described as a “ghost list”. The restrictions do not stop at goods with obvious humanitarian or reconstruction uses. They extend to seemingly mundane everyday items such as batteries, lighters and children’s toys. “I have a lighter that the entire camp borrows whenever they need to light a fire for cooking,” said Imad Sersawi, a 45-year-old Palestinian displaced from the Shujaiya neighbourhood. “Today, whoever has a lighter is considered rich because a single lighter costs 90 shekels ($29),” he added. “You wouldn’t even find it easily in the markets because they haven’t been allowed in months.” Disappearing items The father of five said more and more items are disappearing from Gaza’s markets, making everyday life increasingly uncertain. “One day you find something; the next day it’s banned and disappears for God knows how long. Some things haven’t been allowed in for years,” he said. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); “For example, I haven’t bought any toys for my children since the beginning of the genocide. Before the ceasefire agreement, they used to cry and ask for toys, and I would scold them for not understanding the situation and asking for unavailable things,” he explained. “I used to tell them that once the war was over, I would buy them toys.”  One year after Gaza ceasefire, killing and displacement of Palestinians persist Read More » But even after the ceasefire agreement, Israel continued to bar toys from entering Gaza. Today, toy shops are selling whatever remains from before the war at exorbitant prices. “I cannot buy them a small rubber ball for 100 shekels [$32]. That amount would feed the entire family for two days,” Sersawi continued. “People outside Gaza might say that basic necessities are missing and that we are focusing on these secondary things. But the fact is that we are being left without either the essentials or the non-essentials.” The system governing these restrictions remains opaque. Israel has not published a comprehensive, updated list of dual-use items since 2017, while hundreds of items have been added to the restrictions without being publicly listed. In practice, aid organisations and traders have had to navigate a system in which goods can be rejected because they fall outside the humanitarian category or are deemed “dual-use”. ‘Making the simplest things a struggle’ Everyday objects that would normally be taken for granted have also become difficult to find. Baidaa Othman, a Palestinian journalist, had to travel between two governorates to find a hair claw clip, eventually paying around 10 times its original price. “Now it’s not just about being able to get the basic necessities. It has reached a point where, when you want to buy something very simple, you have to go to extraordinary lengths to find it,” Othman told MEE. “Even the simplest things as basic as a hair clip have become difficult to find. On top of all the basic necessities that are unavailable in Gaza, now the everyday things that no one would normally think twice about have become unavailable.” In an Instagram video, Sojood Hasan, a Palestinian physiotherapist in Gaza, highlighted how restrictions on hair clips reflect a wider loss of everyday choices for women in the Strip. “No one collapses because a hair clip is missing. But the feeling that your life is not in your hands can wear you down,” the young woman said. 'This is not random; it is a policy of making even the simplest things a struggle for Gazans' - Baidaa Othman, Palestinian journalist For Othman, who is originally from Gaza City and remains displaced in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza after her home was destroyed, the need for such an ordinary item is inseparable from the daily realities of displacement. “On top of the displacement and all the hardships we face, including having to cook with firewood, it’s only natural for women to want to put their hair up to keep it off their faces and necks in the heat. So it’s not a secondary item any more,” she said. A clip that once cost around four shekels ($1.3) cost her 45 shekels ($14.5).  “The Israeli occupation knows exactly what it is doing,” Othman said.  “This is not random; it is a policy of making even the simplest things a struggle for Gazans.” Israel's genocide in Gaza Gaza City, occupied Palestine News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called ⁠an early election ​for November 29 on Monday, in a bid to strengthen his mandate after a fragmented parliament rejected the government's key housing decrees last week amid widespread protests. France 24's correspondent in Madrid Sarah Morris has the deetails.

Britain's disgraced former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, filed a legal action on Monday to quash warrants that led to searches of his residences. The police arrested the 66-year-old on February 19 on suspicion of misconduct over his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. 

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s non-oil private sector recorded its strongest improvement in business conditions since February in September, with the Riyad Bank Purchasing Managers’ Index rising to 55.3 from 53.8 in August. According to the PMI report compiled by S&P Global, new orders increased at their fastest pace since the second month of the year and moved closer to their long-run average, suggesting that demand recovered after a slowdown in the middle of 2026. Firms linked the pickup to improvi

DUBAI: Gamma Studios has launched the Digital Media Center in Dubai Production City, a new virtual production facility powered by Sony technology that aims to support filmmakers, production teams and emerging creative talent across the region. The center brings together Sony’s cinema, virtual production and live production technologies with dedicated spaces for demonstrations, workshops, production planning and hands-on workflow testing. At the heart of the facility is a Sony Verona LED wall wit

Authorities began on Sunday to remove a migrant camp on the beach of Ceuta, Spain's enclave in North Africa, ahead of a mid-October visit by Spain's king and queen, police said.

Government forces in Yemen have launched a major military operation to retake the territory seized by Houthi rebels last month.