Mena Today

King Abdullah II of Jordan met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Amman on Tuesday, emphasizing the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Hundreds of students gathered at university campuses in Lebanon on Tuesday to protest against Israel, the country's first coordinated university protests over Gaza, which participants said were inspired by sit-ins in the United States.

A Turkish national on Tuesday stabbed an Israeli border policeman in Jerusalem and was then shot dead by officers at the scene, Israeli police said.

France's foreign minister called on Israel to make public its position on a proposal that he shared with it aimed at defusing tensions between Israel and Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah, as Paris tries to act as an intermediary between the foes.

A rare United Arab Emirates-Iran joint economic commission will convene in Abu Dhabi from Tuesday to Wednesday, the Iranian Labour News Agency reported, as Tehran seeks to bolster economic ties with Gulf states amid mounting U.S. pressure.

Yemen's Houthis said they targeted the MSC Orion container ship in a drone attack in the Indian Ocean as part of their ongoing campaign against international shipping in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel's military actions in Gaza.

Eli Harel was an Israeli soldier in his early thirties when he was sent into Lebanon in 2006 to battle fighters from the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah in a bloody, largely inconclusive month-long war.

Rival Palestinian groups Hamas and Fatah have expressed the political will to seek reconciliation through dialogue at unity talks in Beijing, China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

On Monday, the French National Assembly passed a resolution urging the government to formally recognize the mass killings of Assyrian-Chaldeans by Ottoman authorities during 1915-1918 as a genocide. 

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received a phone call on Monday from U.S. President Joe Biden to discuss the latest developments in negotiations over a ceasefire in Gaza and the dangers of a military escalation in Rafah, a statement from Egypt's presidency said.

The debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Jan. 2 was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile, United Nations sanctions monitors told a Security Council committee in a report seen by Reuters on Monday.