ATHENS - Illegal migrants and refugees in Greece will take a back seat in the nation’s coronavirus vaccination drive, the government in Athens has said, stoking concerns that more than 70,000 asylum-seekers, stuck in squalid living conditions, may become more vulnerable, according to aid workers and the United Nations. In rolling out the vaccine program last month, the center-right government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis vowed to make asylum-seekers eligible for the jab. But Aristotelia Peloni, a government spokesperson, said this past week that thousands of migrants and refugees stuck in some 30 camps across the country or left adrift without proper accommodation, waiting for years to have their asylum requests heard, were not a priority. “There is a provision for [migrant] inoculation...

Waving olive branches, flags and balloons and dressed in colourful traditional robes, hundreds of residents lined the streets of the Iraqi town of Qaraqosh on Sunday waiting for the arrival of Pope Francis. Francis will visit the town's restored Grand Immaculate Church - Iraq's largest - as part of a four-day tour of the country that aims to boost the morale of the country's small Christian communities. The Christian enclave was overrun by Islamic State fighters in 2014, but since the militant were driven out in 2017 families have slowly returned and rebuilt homes that were left in ruins by the militants and the fighting that ousted them. "I can't describe my happiness, it's a historic event that won't be repeated," said Yosra Mubarak, 33, who was three months pregnant when she le...

Pope Francis made a emphatic appeal for peaceful coexistence in Iraq on Sunday as he prayed for the country's war dead amid the ruins of four demolished churches in Mosul, which suffered widespread destruction in the war against the Islamic State group. Francis travelled to northern Iraq on the final day of his historic visit to minister to the country’s dwindling number of Christians, who were forced to leave their homes en masse when IS militants overtook vast swaths of northern Iraq in the summer of 2014. Few have returned in the years since IS was routed in 2017, and Francis came to Iraq to encourage them to stay and help rebuild the country and restore what he called its "intricately designed carpet" of faith and ethnic groups. For the Vatican, the continued presence of Christia...

Riyadh, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 has contributed to achieving many accomplishments at the international level. The most recent achievement was Saudi Arabia’s progress for the second year in a row in the “Women, Business and the Law (WBL) Report 2021”, a global measure of women legal reforms published by the World Bank Group. Saudi Vision 2030 laid the first and solid basis for numerous reforms that paved the way for women's participation in economic development. Since women are a major component of Saudi Arabia’s strength, they were an integral part in building Vision 2030 and achieving it through many initiatives of the National Transformation Program and the National Competitiveness Center “Tayseer”, which contributed to Saudi Arabia’s progress in WBL Report 2021, as th...

Amman, The Jordanian government condemned today, in strong terms, the dangerous and continuous escalation by the Houthi militia to target the civilian areas in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia after launching a number of bomb-laden UAVs. Jordanian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Ambassador Dhaifallah Al-Fayez affirmed Jordan's strong condemnation and denunciation of these cowardly terrorist acts, which are considered as a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and run contrary to international efforts aimed at resolving the conflict according to the approved references to achieve security and stability and meet the aspirations of the Yemeni people for growth and prosperity. Ambassador Al-Fayez stressed Jordan's stand with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in facing threats to its securi...