Since the rise of the AKP party in 2002, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has filed lawsuits against various journalists, politicians, writers, and private citizens who have criticized his actions and the policies of his government. Erdogan's lawyers have argued in court that these critics insulted him by using "defamatory language," violated his rights, and caused him mental anguish.
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The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to Syria and Hizbullah, reports that in talks in Damascus, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Saudi King Abdallah arrived at many understandings, first and foremost concerning the need to maintain stability in Lebanon.
Cartoonist: Fares Hajjaj
Source: Al-Arab, Qatar, July 30, 2010
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa told the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that at its meeting yesterday, the Arab Peace Initiative monitoring committee made no decision about launching direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, and that a letter on the matter had been sent to U.S. President Barack Obama.
The northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by Sheikh Raed Salah, has long been considered an organization that puts the issues of Jerusalem and the defense of the Al-Aqsa Mosque at the forefront of its activity. Recently, however, the movement has expanded its ideological and political focus to the Palestinian cause as a whole – including the Hamas-Palestinian Authority power struggle, the right of return, and negotiations with Israel – and in the process now embraces and openly supports Hamas's perception.
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Unknown armed men carried out a vicious attack on a unit guarding a checkpoint in Baghdad, killing eight soldiers and policemen.
Basra provincial council deputy chairman Ahmad al-Sulati has called on the Iraqi government to take measures toward drawing the borders between Kuwait and Iraq. He said that Kuwait has taken over half of the Iraqi naval base, confiscated a number of oil wells, and begun drilling horizontally to extract oil from Iraqi fields.
The Saudi daily Arab News reports that an epidemiological study, "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009," published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies and Public Health found that the people of Fallujah [in the Anbar province, western Iraq] are experiencing higher rates of cancer, leukemia, infant mortality, and sexual mutations than those recorded among survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after those Japanese cities were incinerated by U.S. atomic bomb strikes in 1945.
Displaced cargoes from Iran are pressuring gasoline premiums in the Middle East, traders said yesterday. As tougher U.S. and EU sanctions have made it more difficult to supply gasoline to Iran, so far only three cargoes of gasoline have reached Iran in July, much less than the seasonal norm.
To view the MEMRI Economic Blog, click here.
