Dr Anwar Gargash, the UAE's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, had tweeted early Thursday morning, "Good morning to all my followers. The UAE passport has just been ranked as the 9th most powerful passport with visa-free entry to 157 countries world wide."

 

Passport index

A bilateral visa waiver agreement between the UAE and Russia earlier in July had seen the Emirati passport become the 10th most powerful in the world.

 

Bahrain leads the list of the best destinations for expatriates for the second year thanks to great results for working abroad and the ease of settling in, said InterNations, a global information site for people who live and work abroad, in a new report.

 

The kingdom received particularly good ratings for working abroad and the ease of settling in (1st in both categories) as well as family life (7th out of 50 countries), added the Expat Insider 2018 Survey.

 

With almost 10 billion people predicted to be living on earth in 30 years’ time, the food system is working hard to feed a growing world. Here’s how it’s working to do that.

The food industry today faces a daunting task: feeding 10 billion mouths in a fair and sustainable way by 2050. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, food supply must more than double in 30 years to provide for the entire world.

 

Myanmar’s military systematically planned a genocidal campaign to rid the country of Rohingya Muslims, according to a report released on Thursday by the advocacy group Fortify Rights based on testimony from 254 survivors, officials and workers over a 21-month period.

 

There has been a dramatic shift in the perception of America by young Arabs over the past two years, with a solid majority — some 57 percent — now regarding the US as an enemy rather than an ally.

 

Instead, Russia is increasingly regarded as the top non-Arab ally by young people in the region, with 20 percent seeing it as the region’s best friend outside the countries of the Middle East and North Africa.

 

Multiple targets in Syria were bombarded by the US, UK, and France in retaliation to what they said was an Assad-orchestrated chemical attack near Damascus. Here are the main facts about the intervention.

 

Washington approved "precision strikes" against Syria early on Saturday, alongside British and French forces that also took part in the bombing. Shortly after US President Donald Trump announced the bombardment, reports began surfacing of explosions in Damascus.

 

The US is fine with "rebels" like Al-Qaeda "protesting" in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed Palestinians protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are "inciting violence."

 

The Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism began as a result of Western countries asking Riyadh to help counter the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Washington Post.

 

Speaking to the paper, bin Salman said that Saudi Arabia's Western allies urged the country to invest in mosques and madrassas overseas during the Cold War, in an effort to prevent encroachment in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union.

 

Western society is flirting with a disturbing trend where people are being denied the time-honored 'presumption of innocence'. The same undemocratic method is even being used against nations in what is becoming a dangerous game.

 

Western leaders and opinion formers believed sanctions and economic pressure would encourage Russians to turn against Vladimir Putin. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

If you’re not Russian, you probably haven’t heard of Aleksey Pushkov. He’s an influential academic, politician, and media personality who once ran the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Duma (the lower house of the parliament) and is widely considered to be close to the Kremlin.