BEIRUT: Lebanon has decided to formally negotiate refugee repatriation with Syria, a minister in the caretaker government said on Thursday.

The Minister of Displaced Affairs Issam Sharaf El-Din said he would visit Damascus after the Eid Al-Adha holiday, making him the first Lebanese minister to visit the Syrian capital in an official capacity since 2011.

Sharaf El-Din will discuss the plan to repatriate Syrian refugees in stages and “secure the executive mechanisms” for their return.

AL-MUKALLA: Yemeni government troops on Thursday opened three main roads in the provinces of Dhale and Taiz as a goodwill gesture on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha and implementing a UN-brokered truce.

The Joint Forces, an umbrella term for three major military units on the country’s western coast, announced unilaterally opening the main road linking Mocha with the city of Taiz through the Al-Bareh area from one side.

They urged the Iran-backed Houthis to open the road that goes through areas under their control in Al-Bareh.

TEHRAN/LONDON: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards arrested several foreign diplomats including a Briton, accusing them of “spying,” the Fars news agency and state television said Wednesday.
“The Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence service identified and arrested diplomats from foreign embassies who were spying in Iran,” Fars said, adding that a British diplomat was subsequently expelled from the country.
State television however reported that the Briton was expelled from “the area” where the diplomats had been arrested in central Iran.

KARAK, Jordan: Long before whiteboards, beamers and laptops entered modern school classrooms, teachers relied on the humble, dusty, sometimes screechy blackboard chalk — a material that has created a Jordanian business success story.

Chemical engineer Salah Aloqbi remembers sitting on a bus in Amman in 1995 when he hit on the idea that would lead him to create his company. More than two decades later it boasts 150 staff, with exports to more than 100 countries.

LONDON: British human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy has said that Turkey should face charges before the International Court of Justice for being complicit in acts of genocide against the Yazidi people.

Kennedy also endorsed an investigation against Syria and Iraq for failing to prevent the killings.

The groundbreaking report, compiled by a group of prominent human rights lawyers, seeks to highlight states’ binding responsibility to prevent genocide on their territories, even if perpetrated by a third party such as extremist organizations.