‘ARA, Israel: One of Israel’s longest serving Palestinian prisoners walked free on Thursday after completing a 40-year sentence, as members of the new right-wing government called for him to be stripped of his citizenship.

Karim Younis, 65, began serving his sentence in 1983 after being convicted of killing Israeli soldier Avraham Bromberg, who had been making his way home from his base in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

AL-MUKALLA: At least seven Yemeni infants have died recently in tents in the central province of Marib as a result of extreme cold, local Yemeni authorities said on Tuesday.

Khaled Al-Shajani, deputy head of the internationally recognized government’s executive unit for camps for the internally displaced in Marib, told Arab News that his office had received reports of the deaths of six newborns in Al-Ma’asher camp and one at another camp in Marib city due to the recent drop in temperatures and chronic scarcity of heaters and adequate shelters.

GAZA CITY: An American NGO chief who obtained Palestinian citizenship through marriage is saving thousands of sick children in the Gaza Strip through his work as founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.
In 2018, Steve Sosebee, an American who married a Palestinian woman, was given a Palestinian passport and ID card. Since then, he has lived on and off in the West Bank.
“I did not choose Palestine, but Palestine chose me,” said Sosebee, 67, who was born in Kent, Ohio.

SAO PAULO, Brazil: Chile’s announcement that it will open an embassy in Palestine, and Brazil’s new government abandoning its predecessor’s pro-Israel foreign policy, have raised hopes in Latin America about changes in regional stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Just one day after left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office on Jan. 1, Brazil announced a radical shift in its diplomacy.

LONDON: Pope Francis has called for the preservation of the historical and legal status quo in occupied Jerusalem, the Palestinian News and Information Agency has reported. 

During his annual meeting with the diplomatic corps accredited to Vatican City on Monday, Pope Francis expressed concern about the rise in violence in Jerusalem.

He said that Jerusalem belongs to the three monotheistic religions — Islam, Judaism and Christianity — and noted that it should be a forum for peace rather than a theater of conflict.