London / AFP United Nations aid contracts worth tens of millions of dollars have gone to people closely associated with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad despite US and EU sanctions, the Guardian reported on Tuesday. The newspaper’s analysis of hundreds of UN contracts granted since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 showed many awarded “to companies run by or linked to ...

  Jerusalem / AFP Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday called criticism of Israeli settlement building “absurd” after a UN envoy strongly hit out at his government over the issue. “The claim that it is illegal for Jews to build in Jerusalem is as absurd as saying Americans can’t build in Washington or the French can’t build in Paris,” Netanyahu ...

  Tripoli / AFP Libya has shipped the last of its chemical weapons stocks out of the country, officials said on Tuesday, under a UN-backed plan to ensure the arsenal could not fall into the wrong hands. The move will ease fears that extremists like the Islamic State group could gain access to the weapons in Libya, which has been wracked ...