Author: Steven Sahiounie

The United States will deploy attack aircraft in the Middle East and keep a carrier group in the Mediterranean Sea, the Pentagon announced on March 31. Pentagon Spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Phil Ventura said that a squadron of A-10 attack aircraft are deploying to the region ahead of a scheduled deployment as a result of the recent attacks by Iranian-backed forces on U.S.-led coalition bases in northeastern Syria. The attacks, which took place on March 23 and 24, claimed the life of a U.S. military contractor and left 12 U.S. service members and a second U.S. contractor wounded. The U.S. responded with a…

Erdogan’s main opponent so far and the sole candidate of the opposition People’s Alliance is Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the People’s Republican Party. The Director of Turkey’s MetroPOLL public opinion research center, Ozer Sencar, said that the votes of people who have not yet chosen their candidate for the 2023 Presidential elections in Turkey, as well as those who support the third candidate, Muharrem Ince, will determine the election’s outcome. From January 13 and March 14, MetroPOLL questioned 2,046 people in 28 provinces about their support for a presidential candidate. “No need to say much, everything is very clear. According to these…

The Official Gazette in Egypt published President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s decision to sign a new law to open an additional appropriation in the state’s general budget. According to the law signed by the Egyptian President, an additional appropriation will be opened for the state budget for the fiscal year 2022/2023, at a value of 165 billion pounds, distributed among the items of wages, workers’ compensation, benefits, support, grants, and social benefits. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi had called for expediting the preparation of a package to improve the income of workers in the state’s administrative apparatus and those with special…

The two foreign ministers are scheduled to tackle bilateral ties between the two countries alongside regional and international developments. Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad arrived in Cairo on Saturday on a 2-day visit to meet his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry. The visit is the first for a top Syrian diplomat to Egypt in over a decade and another sign of warming ties between Damascus and Arab states. The two foreign ministers are scheduled to tackle bilateral ties between the two countries alongside regional and international developments. The visit comes a month after Egypt’s foreign minister visited Syria and Turkey on February 27th in…

The Egyptian Minister of Finance, Mohamed Maait, announced the details of the Cabinet’s approval of the budget for the new fiscal year 2023/2024. The minister stressed that the approval of the budget comes in light of the exceptional circumstances witnessed by the global economy, and imposes extremely difficult pressures on the budgets of countries, including Egypt, whether in terms of the unprecedented rise in the prices of goods and services, as a result of the disruption of supply and supply chains, or the high cost of financing. “Financial allocations for public investments are witnessing an unprecedented increase, especially self-financed, to…

Today, Saturday, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Muhammad Shia Al-Sudani, inaugurated the strategic Karbala refinery, with a production capacity of 140,000 barrels per day. The Prime Minister affirmed that the government has placed at the top of its priorities work to raise the production capacity of refineries. Al-Sudani said in a press statement: “We have placed at the top of the government’s priorities work to raise the production capacity of existing refineries by supporting and completing complementary production units under construction and encouraging investment in the refining sector to establish modern refineries with advanced technical specifications, leading to dispensing with imports…

The World Bank said in a report issued today, Friday, that developing economies in Asia have regained most of the gains they lost during the pandemic, but their recovery is faltering with the decline in productivity. The report expected growth in the region, including China, to pick up this year after Beijing eased restrictions on travel and other activities, but recovery elsewhere in the region, with the exception of China, will ease as inflation pressures slow and household debt increases in consumer spending. The report said economies across the Asia-Pacific region are expected to grow at an annual pace of…

The UAE Central Bank stated, in a statement today, Friday, that it had decided to revoke the license of the Russian MTS Bank branch in Abu Dhabi, UAE. “The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates has announced that it has decided to revoke the license of MTS Bank in Abu Dhabi,” the statement said. Regarding the reasons for withdrawing the license, the Central Bank of the Emirates indicated that “this decision was taken after considering the available options regarding the new status of MTS Bank, as well as taking into account the risks of penalties associated with the bank.”…

China reiterated its strong opposition to any kind of official contact between the United States and Taiwan. Beijing has reaffirmed its sovereignty over Taiwan and said that no person or entity has the power to prevent China from attaining its objective of complete national reunification. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning declared at a press conference in Beijing on Friday that China vehemently rejects any kind of official contact between the United States and Taiwan. It is worth noting that Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen is stopping over in the United States en route to Central America. “We have time and…

Data from the German Federal Employment Agency showed that the unemployment rate in Germany, the largest European economy, rose unexpectedly in March 2023 to the level of 5.6%. The agency said that the unemployment rate in Germany rose this month (March 2023) to 5.6%, from 5.5% recorded in February. The result of March 2023 contradicted analysts’ expectations, and analysts, in a survey conducted by the DailyFX portal, expected the index to remain at the level of February 2023. This article was originally published by RT.