(Harrisburg) — Ahead of next month’s state budget negotiations, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office has released a report reassuring lawmakers that revenues are stable. They came in nearly $900 million higher than expected for the fiscal year ending next month. Most of that money, however, is spoken for. At least some will likely go toward gaps in this year’s budget from hundreds of ...

Public-sector employees and military retirees demonstrated yesterday in Beirut to protest the government’s stated intention to reduce their salaries and pensions, as reported on Anadolu Agency.  Organised by Lebanon’s Trade Union Coordination Body and Association of Public Administration Employees, the protest was timed to coincide with the Lebanese government’s weekly cabinet meeting. Protesters demand the cancellation of certain articles of the ...

CAIRO – Egypt says its police forces have killed 16 militants in raids in the restive northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. An Interior Ministry statement Tuesday says security forces exchanged fire with Islamic militants as they stormed insurgent hideouts in the Mediterranean coastal city of el-Arish. No casualties were reported among the police. The ministry says the extremists had intended ...

Archaeologists working in Cairo have uncovered remains of ancient buildings and a haul of artifacts thousands of years old. Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities said in a statement released Sunday that a joint German and Egyptian excavation team had recovered relics and the remnants of a temple and other structures at a site dating back to between the 6th and 2nd ...

BEIRUT, May 21 (Reuters) – Lebanon, which has one of the world’s heaviest public debt burdens, is finalising a budget to rein in its deficit after years of inaction. The prime minister has said failure to pass a “realistic” budget would be tantamount to a “suicide operation” against the economy. The president has urged Lebanese to be ready to make ...

King Abdullah cleared out the ranks among the senior officials in the royal court and removed senior intelligence officials. There’s a message to the U.S. here, and to Israel Princess Basma bint Talal of Jordan, the sister of the late King Hussein and the aunt of the present king, Abdullah II, knew back in 2013 that the sword was hanging ...

As Palestinian officials nervously await the Trump administration’s peace plan, one fundamental reality shapes their long and bitter contest with Israel. Diplomatically, economically, militarily, Israel has never been stronger than it is today. By contrast, the Palestinian cause has never been in worse shape. Neither Hamas, which alternates between firing rockets and begging Israel to admit to Gaza the supplies ...

With tensions mounting between the Trump administration and Iran, national security adviser John Bolton put Iran — and Iran’s nonstate partners, the regime’s preferred foreign policy tool — on notice. As the United States and its regional partners scramble to determine what happened to four tankers and two Saudi Aramco oil pumping stations — all allegedly attacked by Iranian forces ...

Iraq remains economically dependent on Iran which complicates Washington’s hopes of forcing the country to adopt an actively anti-Iranian policy AמשThe Katyusha rocket that exploded near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a fortified area home to Iraqi government offices and foreign embassies, instantly turned Iraq into a new focal point of the collision course that Iran and the ...

BEIRUT – A senior U.S. official who has been mediating the maritime border dispute between Israel and Lebanon has met with Lebanese officials for a second day, signaling a new push to resolve the matter. Israel and Lebanon both claim some 860 square kilometers (330 square miles) of the Mediterranean Sea. Lebanon hopes to unleash offshore oil and gas production as ...