The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has asked for greater access to a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus where refugees have had to live without water for 40 days. Deputy Commissioner General for the UNRWA Margot Ellis said that increased access to Yarmuk camp was top priority. “In the conversations we had with the government, we were imploring them, …

Islamic State (IS) militants on Wednesday executed over 40 people from a tribe the Albu Nimr tribe, which had battled them in the province of Anbar. According to local sources, the tribesmen were killed in the Heet region to the northwest of Baghdad, which had been overrun by the IS earlier in the month. However, there are no hard statistics …

On Tuesday, an international conference held in Berlin about the Syrian refugee crisis promised to extend long-term financial support to countries struggling to deal with Syrian refugees, which the UN has labeled the world’s “most dramatic humanitarian crisis”. Almost 40 international bodies and countries adopted a declaration saying that they would “mobilize for years to come” increased developmental support to …

The UN Security Council is set to hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to talk about Israel’s plans to construct more settlement building in East Jerusalem. The talks were requested by Jordan after a letter from Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour, who had called on the council to “address this crisis situation in occupied east Jerusalem”. UN Undersecretary General for Political …

Natural Cures Remember that scene in Minority Report, where Tom Cruise is on the run from the law, but is unable to avoid detection because everywhere he goes there are constant retina scans feeding his location back to a central database? That’s tomorrow. Today, Google is tracking wherever your smartphone goes, and putting a neat red dot on a map …

The BBC has renewed its “100 Women” program that focuses on representing women in its international news coverage. The one hundred women chosen this year has more scientists, women working in the arts, and a considerable number of Muslim and Arab women in comparison to last year’s list. Additionally, over one-fifth of the women are under the age of 25. …

At least 850 people were executed in Iran in the last 15 months, a UN official stated on Monday, emphasizing the worsening human rights situation in the country under President Hassan Rouhani. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN’s rights rapporteur for Iran, said that the “surge in executions” has resulted in Iran having the world’s highest death penalty rate per capita. “The …

The mother of Michael Zehaf Bibeau, who shot down a soldier in Ottawa recently, claims that her son’s actions were in despair and expressed doubt over his radicalization. Zehaf-Bibeau killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial before being killed in a gunfight with Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and security personnel at the Parliament Building. According to Postmedia …

The town of Erfoud in the middle of a palm grove in Morocco’s eastern desert watches over a rare treasure – petrified skeletons of prehistoric creatures. The oasis town, home to around 30,000 people, has been called by archaeologists and geologists as “the largest open air fossil museum in the world”. According to locals, the town was under the sea …

On Friday, a student at a US school opened fire in the school, killing two students and wounding several others before he took his own life. The incident occurred in the cafeteria of Marysville-Pilchuck High School in the town of Marysville, Washington. Marysville police spokesman Robb Lamoureux spoke to reporters after the incident, saying, “We are confident that there was …