Daniel Kawczynski is the member of parliament for Shrewsbury in England, though he is jokingly known as the member for Riyadh. "I feel passionately about Saudi Arabia," he told the House of Commons during a debate in 2011. "I have been battling against extraordinary...
Blog archive: All
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16th December 2021
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14th December 2021A report in the Washington Post yesterday appears to confirm Syrian claims that Israel bombed chemical weapons facilities in the country last June – thus destroying evidence sought by OPCW investigators. Although the paper's story is based on unnamed intelligence sources, information from...
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30th November 2021A Yemeni journalist has become the latest victim of Saudi Arabia's laws against religious disbelief. Thirty-year-old Ali Muhsin Abu Lahoum worked in Sana'a for the Yemen Times before moving to Saudi Arabia in 2015 and taking up a job with a TV station. More recently he is said to have been...
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13th November 2021Covid-19 infections recorded in the Middle East and North Africa have seen a further drop during the past week, with a daily average of 14,985 new cases among the 20 countries monitored. New infections peaked in mid-August when the daily average topped 73,000,...
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7th November 2021Four ships carrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar have been diverted to supply Britain following a request for help from prime minister Boris Johnson, the Financial Times reported on Friday. One vessel arrived at the South Hook terminal near Milford Haven on...
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29th October 2021Syria falls silent over claim that Israel destroyed evidence in Douma chemical weapons investigationSyria's Assad regime is resisting calls to substantiate its claim that Israel has destroyed evidence relating to an alleged chlorine attack on Douma in 2018. According to the regime, two gas cylinders at the centre of the Douma investigation were among the "losses"...
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23rd October 2021New Covid-19 cases recorded in the Middle East and North Africa averaged 19,075 a day during the past week. This is the first time since September last year that the daily average among the 20 countries monitored has dropped below 20,000. New infections peaked in...
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21st October 2021Leaked documents show that Saudi Arabia and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have been lobbying to water down a crucial scientific report on climate change. News of the lobbying comes just days before the start of the COP26 conference on international action to slow...
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16th October 2021New Covid-19 cases recorded in the Middle East and North Africa averaged 20,176 a day during the past week – the lowest figure for more than a year. Numbers have declined sharply since mid-August when they peaked at 73,000 a day. Iran, which has been reporting high...
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28th September 2021In April last year a report by the OPCW, the international chemical weapons watchdog, blamed the Assad regime for two sarin attacks on Ltamenah in northern Syria. The implications of this were especially serious because the attacks took place in 2017 – four years after the regime had formally...
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22nd September 2021Patrick George Zaki, a 27-year-old Egyptian, was studying for a postgraduate degree at Bologna University in Italy. In February 2020 he returned to Egypt for a family visit – only to be arrested on arrival at Cairo airport. Zaki has been in custody ever since, awaiting a trial which finally...
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17th September 2021Hundreds of people died – many of them in their sleep – when rockets laden with the nerve agent sarin hit Ghouta, a rebel-held area on the outskirts of Damascus, in the early hours of 21 August 2013. It was the deadliest chemical attack anywhere in the world since the 1980s and it caused...
