The Defense Ministry in Sanaa denied local media reports that Saudi jets struck within Yemeni territory after Houthi rebels seized territory along the kingdom’s southern border.
The New York Times reports from Yemen’s Hadramawt, where a Sufi school is attempting to reclaim the area’s reputation from the media moniker of “ancestral homeland” of Osama bin Laden.
The Yemeni army entered into its fifth day of deadly fighting against Zaydi Shi’ite insurgents in the north of the country.
Yemeni security forces opened fire on thousands of protesters in Zinjibar, provincial capital of Abyan in the country’s restive south, killing 12 and wounding scores of others.
From the World Muslim Congress: Obama, Hujurat and Islamic Calligraphy President Obama quoted the verse 49:13 from Sura Hujurat in his speech in Cairo. “O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and… Read moreObama to Muslims: let’s chill out!
President Obama’s historic speech to the Muslim world at Cairo’s al-Azhar University was a meaningful step forward nonetheless compromised by tactical equivocation…
The Abu Dhabi authorities have detained a brother of the president and opened a criminal investigation of a videotape in which he appears to torture an Afghan grain merchant.
A bomb that exploded amid a violent protest in south Yemen left one dead, as Yemeni commandos stormed a hijacked a tanker in the Gulf of Aden, killing three Somali pirates and capturing 11 others.
A judge for the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon ordered the release of four generals held on suspicion of their involvement in the suicide bombing that killed former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
An Istanbul Court of Appeals upheld the life sentences of six individuals, including prominent journalists Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazli Ilicak, on charges of assisting the plotters of a failed military coup in 2016. The journalists were originally sentenced in February, along with 221 other defendants, and appealed to the higher court for their release. All defendants were charged with being linked to a US-based religious leader Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of orchestrating the 2016 coup attempt. Since the coup attempt, tthe Turkish government has been carrying out purges and arrests aimed at removing supposed Gulen supporters from state institutions and society generally. (Map: CIA)
Yemen war crime investigators called upon the UN Human Rights Council to renew their mandate and allow the continued inquiry into Yemen's internal conflict, calling the situation in the county "extremely alarming." The Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, in their initial report, released in August, found evidence that "members of the Saudi-led coalition, the Yemeni government, and the Houthi armed group have been committing abuses, including indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilians, arbitrary and abusive detention, and recruitment of children." At the time of the report, the experts recommended that their mandate be renewed. However, Saudi Arabia and other coalition members have pressed the council to discontinue the inquiry. (Photo via WikiMedia Commons)
A Turkish court sentenced a former British soldier to seven-and-a-half years for alleged links to Syria's Kurdish YPG militia, considered a "terrorist" group by Ankara. Joe Robinson of Leeds was arrested in Turkey last year after he apparently posted photos of himself in camouflage, posing beside fighters of the People's Protection Units (YPG) in Syria. The Afghanistan veteran was among many volunteers who joined the YPG's campaign against ISIS. A court in Turkey's western city of Aydin sentenced the 25-year-old for "membership in a terrorist organization." Robinson is currently on bail and planning an appeal. His Bulgarian fiancée Mira Rojkan, arrested along with him, was sentenced to two years for "terrorist propaganda." (Photo via Defense Post)
