President of Egypt Abdel Fattah al-Sisi opened a massive cathedral (the Cathedral of Nativity of Christ) on Christmas Eve in Egypt’s new administrative capital just 28 miles east of Cairo. During the inauguration, security was at its peak since there had been a deadly bomb blast at the Al-Haq mosque near the Virgin Mary Church in the Nasr district of… Read more »
Egypt inaugurated a massive cathedral under heavy security on Coptic Christmas Eve Sunday, a day after a deadly bomb blast near a church in the country where jihadists have repeatedly targeted Christians. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi observed a moment of silence after Saturday’s explosion on the eastern edge of Cairo killed a policeman who was trying to defuse the device and wounded two… Read more »
Turkey will go ahead with an offensive against Syrian Kurdish fighters in Syria if the United Statesdelays the withdrawal of its troops from the war-torn country, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said. “If the [withdrawal] is put off with ridiculous excuses like Turks are massacring Kurds, which do not reflect the reality, we will implement this decision,” he told NTV channel on Thursday…. Read more »
President donald trump thinks America is being ripped off. “We have spent $7trn—trillion with a T—$7trn in the Middle East,” he told a crowd last year, exaggerating slightly. “You know what we have for it? Nothing. Nothing.” To right this perceived wrong, Mr Trump has long favoured seizing Iraq’s oil. But after he hinted at the idea with the Iraqi prime… Read more »
Pink bollworms are the scourge of cotton farmers. The insect is less than an inch long, but it has a voracious appetite for the plant’s seeds. As a child living on Kibbutz Ginosar, in Israel’s north, Ofir Schlam would wake up at dawn to inspect leaves for the pest. “They were really hard to find,” he recalls. Spotting the enemy has… Read more »
According to Maronite priest Father Louis Matar, “Miracles are on the rise in Lebanon.” Lebanon’s closest depiction to a Lebanon saint is St. Charbel, who might have a lot to do with the occurrence of these miraculous phenomenons. Before his death in 1898, he conducted as many of 26,000 miracles, but is now more active than ever as Lebanese citizens… Read more »
If any single event sums up the confusion, danger and enormous opportunity posed by the change sweeping across Ethiopia it was when dozens of armed soldiers marched on the office of Abiy Ahmed, the new prime minister, in October. As the troops moved closer, the government shut down the internet, leaving the capital awash with rumours but little information. It looked… Read more »
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the Syrian Democratic Forces had secured Hajin, which is the last big town held by Islamic State group in its remaining pocket of territory east of the Euphrates River near the border with Iraq. “After a week of heavy fighting and air strikes, the SDF were able to kick IS group out of Hajin,” Rami… Read more »
Strange things happen to Nohad al-Shami. In 1993 her painting of St Charbel began oozing oil. Around the same time the long-dead saint appeared in her dreams. “I have come to operate on you,” he said. And so he did, curing her of hemiplegia (paralysis of half of the body), she claims. At the mountain-top monastery of Annaya, in north-west Lebanon,… Read more »
“Hope is the currency of the mediator,” says Martin Griffiths. If that is so, then the United Nations envoy to war-torn Yemen is spending liberally. As The Economist went to press, Mr Griffiths was wrapping up peace talks in Sweden, claiming progress on several fronts. The Houthi rebels and the government they pushed out in 2015 have agreed to exchange thousands of prisoners…. Read more »