Mena Today

There is a bitter irony in the choice of Saint-Denis as the city to award honorary citizenship to Marwan Barghouti. 

The UAE used an urgent session of the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in El-Obeid to deliver a stark message: there is no military solution to Sudan's conflict, and the only viable path forward is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire combined with an urgent humanitarian truce.

A Hezbollah delegation, including family members of assassinated former Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah and slain top commander Imad Mughniyeh, travelled to Tehran Friday to attend the official ceremony paying homage to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, killed in an Israeli strike on February 28.

Lomé hosted Friday the opening of an extraordinary summit of the African Political Alliance (APA), bringing together ten African member states and representatives from Gulf countries - notably Kuwait and Qatar - to discuss the continent's response to the Middle East crisis and its far-reaching consequences for African economies.

The body of Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was lying in state in a vast hall in Tehran on Friday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects after his 37-year rule. 

The World Bank has announced the appointment of Dahlia Khalifa as Division Director for the Middle East Department, covering Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. She succeeds Jean-Christophe Carret, who served in the role for four years.

Moldova's Prime Minister Alexandru Munteanu said on Friday he was stepping down, in a surprise announcement that also triggers the resignation of the government.

The United Nations human rights chief on Friday said another human rights catastrophe was unfolding in Sudan, in the city of al-Obeid in North Kordofan, and urged the world to act.

NATO leaders gather next week in Ankara, where Europeans aim to set aside strife with U.S. President Donald Trump over Iran and Greenland and show they are stepping up to defend the continent as Washington cuts back on its commitments to the alliance.

UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) received Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, who is on a working visit to the UAE, for talks covering bilateral relations and regional developments.

Russia launched hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles at Ukraine's capital Kyiv in the early hours on Thursday, killing at least 21 people, wounding scores more and damaging around 130 buildings in one of the biggest attacks of the war.

Iran's ruling clerics are preparing days of mass funeral rites for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a show of public devotion to the Islamic Republic and proof that its revolutionary fervor still burns strong.