ISTANBUL: A top member of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party has resigned following a string of corruption allegations levelled through social media by a fugitive crime boss.
Convicted felon Sedat Peker has gained a cult following in Turkey by using YouTube and Twitter to accuse top members of Erdogan’s team of everything from graft to drug smuggling and even murder.
BEIRUT: On Wednesday, telecommunication networks in southern Lebanon were completely out of service. Other regions may follow, portending a nationwide telecom and internet outage.
A total of 5,674 employees at the Ministry of Communications and state-run internet provider Ogero went on strike, demanding that their salaries be increased.
Maintenance on the telephone networks that feed telecom lines has stopped as employees insisted on not fixing any malfunctions until their demands are met.
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr may have declared his “definitive retirement” from politics this week, but the violence that erupted after his announcement points to murkier intentions, analysts believe.
“Al-Sadr is looking to become the most powerful Shiite political player in Iraq,” Renad Mansour of British think tank Chatham House said.
“That is his agenda, and part of achieving that requires destabilizing not just the political system as such, but particularly the Shiite house and building it back up with him at the center of it.”
AL-MUKALLA: UN observers in Hodeidah have urged the Iran-backed Houthis to reduce their “significant” presence in the western Yemeni city, warning that any military action would threaten the UN-brokered ceasefire and Stockholm Agreement.
The UN Mission to support the Hodeidah Agreement, or UNMHA, said that it has seen large deployments of Houthi fighters in the city, raising fears of military activity that could undermine a fragile truce in the country.
UNITED NATIONS: The UN political chief warned Tuesday that failure to resolve Libya’s political crisis and hold delayed elections poses a growing threat in the country, pointing to violent clashes a few days ago that killed at least 42 people and injured 159 others according to Libyan authorities.
