Author: Steven Sahiounie

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says US envoy Brett McGurk is in Doha to continue efforts on a new Hamas-Israel prisoner swap. “What I can tell you is we’re working on this very diligently. I don’t want to get ahead of where we are, but I’d say we’re having very serious and intensive discussions in Qatar about the possibility of another deal. We’re hopeful it can bear fruit, and bear fruit soon,” said Kirby. The efforts come after Qatari and French mediation helped get medicine into Gaza on Wednesday for Israeli captives and Palestinian civilians. Kirby praised the…

A resolution mandating the State Department to inform Congress about any evidence of human rights violations by Israel in Gaza was sidelined or defeated by the Senate on Tuesday evening with a vote of 72-11. The US Senate on Tuesday rejected a resolution that would have halted security aid to “Israel” unless the State Department produced a report within 30 days assessing whether “Israel” committed human rights violations in its war on Gaza. The resolution was set aside with 72 senators voting against it, while 11 supported it, easily surpassing the simple majority needed to defeat the resolution in the 100-member chamber.…

Iran has warned US President Joe Biden not to “tie his destiny” to that of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leading the regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip while enjoying Washington’s all-out support.

Iran has warned US President Joe Biden not to “tie his destiny” to that of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is leading the regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip while enjoying Washington’s all-out support. Speaking to the American business news channel CNBC on Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian described the US backing for the occupying entity as “the root of insecurity” in West Asia. “The US should not, Mr. [Joe] Biden should not, tie their destiny to the fate of Netanyahu,” he said during the interview on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos. “The full-scale…

The humanitarian situation in Gaza, especially for children, is “catastrophic,” a senior UNICEF official said during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. Kitty van der Heijden, deputy executive director of partnerships at the agency, said nowhere was safe for those trapped in the middle of the battle between Hamas and Israeli forces. Children in Gaza were facing the threat of “three Ds,” she said: death from the air, disease from dirty water and deprivation of basic necessities such as food. “We need urgent, collective action to really address the situation for children on the ground,”…

Ambassador for Palestinian Affairs and Representative of Japan to Palestine, Nakashima Yoichi, visited the Joint Service Council for Planning and Development in Biddu town, in the Jerusalem governorate, to celebrate the completion of a project funded by the Government of Japan through Japan’s Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects (GGP). The Government of Japan extended a grant of $87,155 to the Joint Service Council for Planning and Development to improve access to water in non-water network areas of Beit-Iksa and Al-Qubibeh. Upon the completion of the project, about 250 people will directly benefit from access to clean water at…

These photographs taken on Tuesday show makeshift tents in the courtyard of a UNRWA school-turned-shelter in Rafah, in southern Gaza. UNRWA shelters like this one in southern Gaza have become home to an average of 12,000 Palestinians, more than four times their overall capacity, according to the latest estimates released by UNRWA on January 12. UNRWA, the UN’s relief agency for Palestinian refugees, is hosting about 1.4 million of the 1.78 million Palestinians who have been forced to flee their homes in Gaza. Source: AlJazeera

MOSCOW, January 16. /TASS/. The price of Brent and WTI crude oil futures with March on London’s ICE reacted with a decline to the news that the Houthis from the Yemeni rebel movement Ansar Allah confirmed an attack on the bulk carrier Zografia off the coast of Yemen.

Russian Ambassador to the United Kingdom Andrey Kelin said it would be incorrect to draw parallels between the events in Gaza and Ukraine

NEW YORK, January 17. /TASS/. The Israeli military believes the tunnels that Hamas built underneath Gaza could have a total length of 560 to 720 kilometers, a vast network given that the longest distance between territory’s borders is only about 40 kilometers, the New York Times reported, citing sources.