WASHINGTON: The Biden administration remains committed to re-opening a US consulate in Jerusalem and is further discussing the issue with Israelis and Palestinians, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Tuesday.
Former US President Donald Trump moved Washington’s embassy to Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018 and shut down a separate facility in the city that served as a consulate for Palestinians.

TRIPOLI: Libyan Mohamed Abderraouf put a foot on his board and launched himself across Tripoli’s first skatepark, a welcome break in the conflict-battered capital with few facilities for bored young people.
“I can’t describe the joy,” said the 18-year-old, who bought his first skateboard in 2020 and had only been able to practice on street corners — until now. “I’m going to come a couple of times a week.”

DUBAI: Iran disrupted internet access to the outside world as angry demonstrators rallied over the collapse of a tower in Iran that has killed at least 36 people, experts said on Tuesday as outrage and grief continued to grow in the country.

The disruption has plunged the southwestern province into digital isolation, making it difficult for journalists to authenticate events on the ground and for activists to share footage and organize protests.

JEDDAH: The saga of the Safer continues with an attempt by the UN to raise funds to salvage the stricken vessel that has been anchored close to Yemen’s Red Sea coast since 1988.

The plan is to raise $144 million, of which $80 million will pay for offloading the cargo of oil on board the Safer. To this end, the governments of the US and the Netherlands, represented by Dutch Ambassador to the US Andre Haspels, jointly hosted a meeting on Friday that was attended by Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, and representatives from the diplomatic community in Washington.

BAGHDAD: An Iraqi court has sentenced to death a Daesh member convicted of plotting a 2021 bomb attack that killed 32 people in a crowded Baghdad market.
It was the city’s first major suicide bombing in three years that ended a period of relative calm after Iraq declared the defeat of the jihadist group in late 2017.
The man, who was not named, was found guilty of planning the January 2021 twin suicide bombing that hit the market at Baghdad’s Tayaran Square and also wounded 110 people.
A Baghdad court has sentenced the attack’s “primary perpetrator,” the Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement. He had confessed to being part of Daesh since 2012 and to having equipped the two suicide attackers.

In the attack, one man drew a crowd by claiming to feel sick before he detonated his explosives belt, the Interior Ministry said at the time.
As more people flocked to the scene to help the victims, the second suicide bomber set off his explosives.
Iraq frequently hands down death sentences, usually for terrorism or murder convictions.
London-based rights group Amnesty International recorded at least 17 executions in Iraq in 2021, down from 50 the previous year, but said death sentences “rose more than threefold from 2020.”
In April, eight people were sentenced to death in two trials, four over a car bombing and four for murder.
The last major Daesh attack in the capital came in July 2021, when a bomb ripped through a crowded market in the Sadr City suburb, killing more than 30 people.
Daesh has “maintained the ability to launch attacks at a steady rate in Iraq, including hit-and-run operations, ambushes and roadside bombs,” a UN report said in January.
Three teenagers and three policemen were shot dead in northern Iraq as they put out a crop fire last week, an attack that officials blamed on Daesh.