Greater Middle East

Egyptian town divided after anti-Coptic pogrom

Coptic Christian shop owners in the Egyptian town of Farshoot are refusing to reopen their stores until the government compensates them for damages in two days of rioting over the weekend.

Greater Middle East

Saudi Arabia bombs Yemen?

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.

Greater Middle East

Yemen: Sufis make New York Times —again

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.

Greater Middle East

Protesters “massacred” in south Yemen

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.

Greater Middle East

Obama in Cairo: selective historical memory

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…

Greater Middle East

Regional protests, pirates rock Yemen

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.

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ARSO

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)