Author: Steven Sahiounie

The International Court of Justice, the top United Nations court, has ordered Israel to halt its offensive in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” the ICJ said on Friday. In early May, Israel carried out ground incursions into the refugee-packed city of Rafah in defiance of global warnings, forcing more than 800,000 people “to flee”, according to UN figures. The ICJ, widely…

One in every three Lebanese “was poverty-stricken in 2022,” the World Bank said in a report covering about 60 percent of the country’s population

GCC debt capital market (DCM) issuances are steadily reaching $1 trillion outstanding, but remain fragmented, Fitch Ratings said in a new report.

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s non-oil exports saw an annual rise of 3.3 percent in the first quarter of 2024, fueled by an increase in the value of re-exports, according to official data. According to the General Authority for Statistics, while national non-oil exports experienced a slight dip of 5.2 percent, the value of re-exported goods surged by 31.5 percent during the same period. This trend underscores Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning role as a logistical hub – a key goal of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 economic diversification strategy. Leveraging its strategic geographic location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Kingdom has…

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia secured membership in the International Transport Forum on the sidelines of the event held in Leipzig, Germany.

The bloc wants to introduce new sanctions against Belarus, which serves as an import route, the newspaper says

China is an important player on the global economic stage that cannot be left aside, JPMorgan Asia Pacific CEO Sjoerd Leenart said on Thursday at the 20th annual Global China Summit in Shanghai.

By: Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator When word broke that the Iranian helicopter was thought to have crashed, Saudi Arabia was one of the first nations to offer all help and support to Iran. Ebrahim Raisi, the 8th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, along with his Foreign Minister and others. Raisi will be remembered foremost as a cleric. He was successful in garnering support from the political circles, as well as the religious ones. He studied Islam at the seminary in Qom, and called himself an ayatollah, which is a title reserved for…

Yemen’s Ansarullah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has hailed President Ebrahim Raeisi as a “source of honor for the Islamic Ummah and a brave person in defense of Iran and Islamic countries”. “We share the grief of the martyrdom of the President of Iran, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and their comrades,” Houthi said in a televised address on Thursday. President Raeisi lost his life in a helicopter crash in northwest Iran on Sunday along with seven other passengers and crew including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. “Martyr Raeisi was the conveyor of Iran’s position towards the issues of the Islamic Ummah and he…

“President (Gustavo) Petro has given the order that we open the Colombian embassy in Ramallah, the representation of Colombia in Ramallah, that is the next step we are going to take,” Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo told journalists Thursday according to Reuters. Murillo added he believes more countries will soon begin backing the recognition of a Palestinian state before the United Nations, efforts Colombia has already supported. At the beginning of this month, Petro, who had already recalled the Colombian ambassador from Tel Aviv citing Israel’s massacre of Palestinians, said he would break diplomatic relations with Israel over its actions…