Bahrain’s Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa and Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi arrived in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah ahead of Saturday’s Gulf Cooperation Council summit. They were welcomed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman upon their arrival in Jeddah.

Senior Iranian and Egyptian officials held a secret meeting in Oman on June 27, during Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s visit to the sultanate, informed sources tell The Media Line. Egypt assured Iran during the meeting that the Negev Summit is not directed against Iran and will not include any military moves against it. Iran’s Mehr News Agency confirmed the existence of the meeting in Oman, but it did not specify the issues that were discussed between Cairo and Tehran. Egyptian and Gulf news agencies and newspapers did not report any news about the meeting.

Gamers8, billed as the world’s biggest esports and gaming event, gets underway in Riyadh on Thursday. The eight-week festival, which continues until Sep. 8, includes a series of gaming tournaments and esports programs, in addition to an entertainment lineup featuring international and local artists. The event — which will take place at the NXT LVL Arena, a custom-built, state-of-the-art venue in Riyadh Boulevard City and is organized by the creators of charity tournament Gamers Without Borders — aims to blur the lines between the real and virtual worlds.

Ennahda leader Rashid Ghannouchi, the judge Bashir al-Akrami, Mansour Rashid, Najah Hajj Latif, and security leaders, including Wahid Toujani, Mehrez Zouari, Mustafa Ben Omar, Atef El Amrani and Al-Azhar Longo, have been reported for different crimes, including money laundering. The Defence Committee spoke of the existence of a secret financial apparatus linked to Ghannouchi, in addition to communication with foreign parties, which aimed to harm national interests.

More than 30 million people around the world had to relocate within their home countries due to natural disasters in 2020, nearly 4.5 million of them in Bangladesh. Today, Begum’s entire community -known as the Manta people — live aboard small boats on two of the nation’s major rivers. It’s…

A rocket strike on a five-story apartment building in the eastern town of Chasiv Yar on Saturday night killed 15 people and left two dozen people feared trapped in the rubble. President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said the strike was “another terrorist attack” and that Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism. Moscow denies it targets civilians, but Ukrainian cities, towns and villages have been left in ruins after Russian shelling, with basements and bomb shelters the only safe place for those who remain.

Iranian authorities have arrested a prominent reformist activist and two filmmakers on charges of acting against national security, local media said on Friday. Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former reformist deputy interior minister turned activist, was detained on charges of “acting against national security and spreading lies to disturb public opinion,” the semi-official news agency Mehr reported. The two were among a group of actors and filmmakers who had signed an appeal that called on security forces to “lay down your weapons and return to the nation’s embrace” during street protests that followed a deadly building collapse in May which officials blamed on corruption and lax safety.

This week, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif chaired an on-camera meeting in Islamabad attended by over 100 lawmakers and officials to deliberate on talks with the Pakistani Taliban. …

Iraq is often featured for its wars and conflicts, but the country also boasts a rich natural environment. Spanning jagged mountains in the north to pristine deserts in the south, it offers a habitat to 84 endangered mammals, birds, reptiles and fish species. Wildlife conservationists are trying to strengthen laws and raise awareness to save these species from extinction. Simona Foltyn reports. Illegal hunting is not just threatening wildlife in Iraqi Kurdistan. It is wiping out ever-shrinking populations of endangered species across the country, including here in Iraq’s southern deserts bordering Saudi Arabia.