Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said on Monday he saw no reason for Middle Eastern governments to propose any changes to transportation policy in response to U.S. airlines that allege unfair competition from Gulf carriers. “Why should my government make any concession?” he said in an interview at the International Air Transport Association (IATA) annual meeting in Miami. ...

The United Nations on Monday left Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas off its blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children’s rights during conflicts, but criticised Israel over its 2014 military operations. UN special envoy for children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, had included Israel’s army – known as the IDF – and Hamas in a draft of ...

Iraq’s plan to recapture the western city of Ramadi from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants will dominate a meeting Tuesday in Paris of foreign ministers from the international coalition fighting the group, a senior U.S. official said. In the wake of the damaging defeat in Ramadi this month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi will outline how his ...

Iraqi troops left the strategically vital city of Ramadi — allowing it to fall to ISIS — because of a direct order from their military commanders of which Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was not aware, according to the powerful Sunni speaker of Iraq’s parliament. Salim al-Jabouri, arguably the most powerful Sunni politician in the country, said that Ramadi was abandoned last month ...

Nepal’s labor minister urged Qatar Monday to scrap a sponsorship scheme which prevents the free movement of migrant workers, calling it a violation of the rights of thousands of its nationals who are working in the Gulf state. The kafala sponsorship system is used to monitor the number of foreigners working in Gulf Arab states, which rely heavily on cheap foreign labor ...

Israel’s newly elected Knesset is barely two months old, and for all the challenges it has faced — including international pressure for a two-state solution, a struggle to form a coalition, and a plan to segregate buses that brought widespread criticism — the legislative body is already enjoying one major success: There are more women in Knesset now than there have ever ...

Yemen may never emerge as a united country from a civil war pitting a northern Shiite militia and its allies in the army against fighters in the mostly Sunni south. The latest conflict, now in its third month, has exacerbated long-standing grievances that are regional but also increasingly religious in a country whose unity has always been frail. Secessionist sentiment ...

A campaign led by Shiite paramilitaries to drive ISISmilitants from Iraq’s Sunni heartland was rebranded Wednesday after criticism that the name chosen for the push was overtly sectarian. The move was a response to fears that Iraq’s reliance on Shiite paramilitaries to defeat ISIS fighters, instead of the disordered and demoralized national army, could alienate Sunni Iraqis and deepen the ...

Syrian rebel groups Thursday said they had seized the town of Ariha – the last regime-held urban center in Idlib province – after launching their campaign earlier in the day. The latest blow to the regime of President Bashar Assad came at the hands of the Army of Conquest rebel coalition, made up of seven groups and led by the ...

Al-Qaeda’s Syria franchise is striving to reinvent itself as a legitimate opposition force more acceptable to the West, but it is unlikely to succeed, analysts said Thursday. In a rare television interview, Nusra Front chief Abu Mohammad al-Golani vowed not to use Syria as a springboard to attack the West and said he would be willing to protect minorities. “It’s ...