BEIRUT — Eight people were wounded in a grenade explosion in northern Lebanon’s port city of Tripoli on Wednesday, the country’ s official news agency reported.
The explosion took place on Wednesday’s evening at al-Ashkar Cafe in Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen neighborhood. Among the eight injured, one is in serious condition. It is still unclear who is responsible for the incident.
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DAMASCUS — Unity is upmost important for the Arab world in the face of increasing challenges and risks against the region, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on a Syrian-Saudi summit talks in Damascus on Wednesday.
Al-Assad made the remarks in a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz on Wednesday, who is on a two-day official visit to Syria.
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SANAA — Yemeni parliament Wednesday urged the army to end the rebellion in northern Yemen and restore order in the country shortly, official SABA news agency reported.
Attending lawmakers also asked the government to take up its responsibilities towards thousands of civilians who have been displaced due to the fierce battles running between the army and the Houthi rebels in the northern provinces of Saada and Amran.
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CAIRO — Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit warned on Wednesday that Palestinian parties which hinder reconciliation efforts are not actually pursuing a Palestinian unity.
“I can’t imagine that a party which make negative movements regarding reaching a reconciliation agreement is really working for Palestinian unity,” Abul Gheit said at a news briefing in the headquarters of the Egypt’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.
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GAZA — Chances to succeed the inter-Palestinian dialogue and reach a reconciliation deal became slim on Wednesday, as controversy among the Palestinians has mounted following a postponement of a vote on a U.N. fact-finding report which accuses Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza.
The chances became small after Islamic Hamas movement applied to Egypt, the inter-Palestinian dialogue’s sponsor, to postpone the signing of a reconciliation deal in Cairo due late October, unless Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas officially apologizes to the Palestinians for being behind postponing the voting.
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GAZA — An Israeli army force backed by several tanks and armored vehicles stormed on Wednesday evening an area in northern Gaza Strip and razed Palestinian farms amid intensive shooting, witnesses said.
The witnesses in northern Gaza said the Israeli army ground forces advanced about 100 meters into the Palestinian-controlled area, as bulldozers razed a farm under the protection of helicopters.
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AMMAN — Jordan’s Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh Wednesday called for pressure on Israel to stop the clashes in East Jerusalem and around the area of al-Aqsa Mosque, the Jordanian News Agency Petra reported.
As intensive efforts are underway to end the Palestinian- Israeli conflict, clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in East Jerusalem and al-Aqsa Mosque area became an obstacle to achieving peace, the minister was quoted as saying.
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TEHRAN — Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that Iran has no plan to join the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the official IRNA news agency reported.
“The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is quite aware of the fact that Iran has no plan to join the Additional Protocol of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Mottaki was quoted as saying.
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KUWAIT CITY — Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmad Al-Abdullah Al- Sabah said Wednesday the country’s schedule to lift its daily crude output to four million barrels by 2020 remains unchanged, the official KUNA news agency reported.
The minister’s remarks came a day after he was quoted as saying the country’s ambition to boost the daily output to four million barrels by 2020 would be delayed till 2030.
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JERUSALEM — Israeli scientist Ada E. Yonath was declared on Wednesday as one of the winners of the 2009 Nobel Prize in chemistry, becoming the fourth woman to be awarded this honor.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Science said in a statement that Yonath, together with Thomas A. Steitz from America’s Yale University and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain’s Cambridge, win the prize for their respective achievements on “the ribosome’s translation of DNA information into life.”
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CAIRO — Egypt decided to suspend all cooperation with France’s Louvre Museum until it returns five stolen Pharaonic paintings, Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to the statement, this council’s decision includes a halt of conferences organized with the Louvre, as well as excavations activities of the Louvre on the Pharaonic area of Sakara in Giza.
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ANKARA — Three militants of the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) were killed in a clash with the Turkish security forces in eastern Turkey Wednesday, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
The clash between a group of PKK rebels and the security forces broke out during an operation in Ogul area in Caldiran town of Van province, according to the report.
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KHARTOUM — A UN official on Wednesday acknowledged reduction in the level of violence and armed conflicts in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, which is suffering a civil war since 2003.
“In Darfur, the reduction in opened armed conflicts is a welcome development and we remain hopeful that this trend will continue,” said Peter De Clercq, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Sudan, in a press conference at the headquarters of the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) on Wednesday.
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TEHRAN — Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran is ready to buy its needed nuclear fuel from any country even from the United States, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Talking to the reporters, Ahmadinejad said that “If the Americans have announced that they want to provide our needed ( nuclear) fuel, there is no problem. We think it is a good point. We want to buy our fuel from any supplier in the world. It makes no difference, the United States can be one of the suppliers.”
