Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said abuses were being committed on giant construction sites in Saudi Arabia and warned of the risks to migrant workers building stadiums for the 2034 World Cup.
HRW said "scores of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia die in gruesome yet avoidable workplace-related accidents, including falling from buildings, electrocution, and even decapitation".
US President Donald Trump landed in Doha Wednesday after visiting Riyadh, where he urged Syria's president to normalise with Israel after offering a major boost to the war-ravaged country by vowing to lift sanctions.
Trump became the first US president in 25 years to meet a Syrian leader -- Ahmed al-Sharaa, an erstwhile Islamist guerrilla and onetime jihadist who had been on a US wanted list and led the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December.
United Nations relief chief Tom Fletcher on Tuesday called on the UN Security Council to take action "to prevent genocide" in Gaza, delivering a scathing account of Israel's actions in the Palestinian territory.
Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, demanded that Israel lift its aid blockade on Gaza, where its offensive has killed tens of thousands and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.
Rights groups on Tuesday urged judges to halt Britain's supply of fighter jet parts to Israel amid the war in Gaza, as they took the government to court and accused it of breaking international law.
Supported by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and others, the Palestinian rights association Al-Haq is seeking a court order to stop the government's export of UK-made components for Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
Israel has used the US warplanes to devastating effect in Gaza and the West Bank.
Human Rights Watch on Wednesday said grave abuses were being committed on giant construction sites in Saudi Arabia and warned the risks to migrant workers could increase as the building of stadiums for the 2034 World Cup gathers pace.
HRW said "scores of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia die in gruesome yet avoidable workplace-related accidents, including falling from buildings, electrocution, and even decapitation".
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would lift sanctions on Syria to offer it a chance for "greatness" after Bashar al-Assad's fall, as he cast himself as a peacemaker in the Middle East.
On a state visit to Saudi Arabia primarily aimed at securing billions of dollars of investment, the billionaire president took aim both at the US left and right who he said had intervened in the region in the guise of "nation builders" but "wrecked far more nations than they built".
Gaza rescuers said Israeli strikes close to a hospital in the Palestinian territory killed at least 28 people Tuesday, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the military would enter Gaza "with full force" in the coming days.
The release of 21-year-old Israeli-American Edan Alexander, who had been in Hamas captivity since their October 2023 attack on Israel, offered a brief pause in the fighting on Monday.
But the strikes resumed amid fierce new criticism of Israel's tactics in the war.
The US Senate's top Democrat announced Tuesday he would hold up all Justice Department political appointees in protest over President Donald Trump's acceptance of a $400 million luxury plane as a gift from Qatar.
The Gulf state's royal family has offered to donate a 747-8 jumbo jet as Trump awaits the delayed delivery of two new presidential planes from Boeing.
But the move raises huge constitutional and ethical questions -- as well as security concerns about using an aircraft donated by a foreign power for use as the ultra-sensitive Air Force One.
Rights groups and NGOs took the UK government to court on Tuesday accusing it of breaching international law by supplying fighter jet parts to Israel amid the war in Gaza.
Supported by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and others, the Palestinian rights association Al-Haq is seeking to stop the government's export of UK-made components for Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
A months-long Israeli blockade is worsening acute malnutrition in the Gaza Strip, medical charity Medecins du Monde warned on Tuesday, accusing Israel of using hunger as "a weapon of war".
Israel halted all aid from entering the war-ravaged Palestinian territory on March 2, days before resuming its offensive triggered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel.
