At the G7 Summit last June, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison, representing the U.S., United Kingdom and Australia respectively, met in private talks. The subject was how to contain China and its influence. In September these leaders announced the AUKUS Alliance, a defence agreement between the countries. Australian …

The SDF and the Coalition forces conducted “operations in Ar Raqqah Province resulting in the detention of a key Daesh (ISIS) facilitator” The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested an alleged ISIS facilitator in Raqqa in a joint operation with the US-led coalition on Tuesday. Today @cmoc_SDF and Coalition forces …

At home in Helsinki, Ilona Taimela scrolls through hundreds of WhatsApp chats with her former pupils — pictures of animals, maths sums and simple sentences in English and Finnish. Last year, the teacher gave lessons to Finnish children imprisoned about 3,000 kilometres away in Syria’s Al Hol displacement camp — …

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continue to plan to act independently and take out Iranian nuclear facilities if the upcoming Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) talks fail. Iran has stalled for five months on the resumption of talks which are scheduled to finally begin today. However, the talks between …

President Michel Aoun’s meetings in Doha focused on Lebanon-Qatar relations, soccer and the crisis between Lebanon and Gulf countries. Lebanese President Michel Aoun visited Qatar on Monday. Aoun met Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in the capital, Doha. The two discussed bilateral relations, and Thani expressed Qatar’s …

Thousands of migrants have gotten stuck at the Belarus-Poland border this winter, many of them Kurds from Iraq. Authorities from Baghdad and Erbil are continuing to repatriate migrants from Belarus. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in conjunction with the federal Iraqi government has returned 1,872 people from the eastern European …

The Kurdistan Region’s peshmerga forces suffer another attacked by Islamic State fighters. The Islamic State (IS) attacked Kurdistan Region security forces in northern Iraq again today. The assault occurred north of Kifri in the Diyala province. There were casualties among the Kurdistan Region’s peshmerga forces, the Erbil-based news outlet Kurdistan …

Israel’s leadership has ramped up diplomatic efforts to convince world powers to keep the sanctions on Iran in place and not give an inch during the renewed talks. As negotiators gathered in Vienna for talks with Iran on its nuclear program Nov. 29, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett addressed them …

Ethiopia has announced that it will soon finish construction work on the GERD, while Egypt has warned of the consequences of not reaching an agreement in the latest escalation between the two countries. An Egyptian official warned of the consequences of not reaching an agreement on the dispute over the …

The return to negotiations will be the first talks with Iran under new President Ebrahim Raisi. Iran and several world powers have restarted the talks designed to restore the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, officially the 7th round of these specific talks. The resumption …