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President Trump on Friday demanded that Qatar stop funding terrorism, striking a hard line against the tiny emirate just hours after his State Department had urged other Gulf nations to end their blockade of the besieged country. “The nation of Qatar, unfortunately, has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level. The time has come to call on Qatar to end its funding,” Trump said at the White House. “Hopefully it will be the beginning of the end of funding terrorism. It will, therefore, be the beginning of the end to terrorism. No more funding.”

the tiny Gulf state, which won the right to host the event nearly three years ago, is embroiled in controversy over the treatment of the huge migrant labor force within its borders.

Hassan al-Thawadi, secretary general of the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee, defended his country's efforts in a CNN interview, and said he was outraged by the claim made last week by an international labor organization that it is a "slave state."

The "slave state" claim came as Sharan Burrow, secretary general of the International Trade Union Confederation, warned that if current trends continue an estimated 4,000 migrant workers may die in Qatar as they toil on construction projects in the run-up to the World Cup.

Tensions between Qatar and neighboring Persian Gulf monarchies broke out Wednesday when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from the country over its support of the Muslim Brotherhood and allied Islamists around the region.

The concerted effort to isolate Qatar, a tiny, petroleum-rich peninsula, was an extraordinary rebuke of its strategy of aligning with moderate Islamists in the hope of extending its influence amid the Arab Spring revolts.But in recent months Islamists’ gains have been rolled back, with the military takeover in Egypt, the governing party shaken in Turkey, chaos in Libya and military gains by the government in Syria.

The Saudi monarchs, in particular, have grumbled for years as tiny Qatar has swaggered around like a heavyweight. It used its huge wealth and Al Jazeera, which it owns, as instruments of regional power. It negotiated a peace deal in Lebanon, supported Palestinian militants in Gaza, shipped weapons to rebels in Libya and Syria, and gave refuge to exiled leaders of Egypt’s Brotherhood — all while certain its own security was assured by the presence of a major American military base.

Qatar blockade: Gulf states silent on Tillerson plea to ease measures

Nations behind a blockade on Qatar have welcomed strong comments from President Donald Trump backing their move, but were silent on calls from his secretary of state to ease the measures.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain have cut ties, accusing Qatar of funding terrorism. Qatar denies the accusations.

President Trump assailed Qatar for funding terrorism “at a very high level” Friday, just hours after the U.S. State Department urged Arab states to ease their blockade against the Gulf country.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. has shifted its posturing since this crisis in Qatar began. While Trump seemingly praised the six Arab countries (Libya and Yemen were also among them) Tuesday for their decision to sever relations with Qatar, the president later reiterated in a call with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani Wednesday the importance of a “united” Gulf Cooperation Council, a regional body of which Qatar is a member, offering to help resolve the dispute.

Middle East madness engulfs Iran, Qatar and US

In the turbulent Middle East, there seems no limit on the number of conflicts that can occur at once. On Wednesday morning, residents of Tehran experienced a series of coordinated attacks, with at least a dozen people killed as gunmen and a suicide bomber assaulted the Parliament building and the mausoleum housing the tomb of the Islamic republic's founder, Ayatollah Khomeini. ISIS quickly claimed responsibility. The Tehran attack comes as another political battle boils over in the oil-rich Gulf. Iran is not directly involved, but Tehran is one of the reasons for what has erupted into one of the most intense political feuds pitting Gulf Arabs against each other.

For the last few years, though, I’ve felt the opposite — that so much of my work was decrying bad choices made by big players

Vladimir Putin’s tightening dictatorship and aggression, culminating in his brutal invasion of Ukraine; Xi Jinping’s reversal of China’s opening; Israel’s election of the most right-wing government in its history; the cascading effects of climate change; the loss of control over America’s southern border; and, maybe most ominously, an authoritarian drift, not only in European countries like Turkey, Poland and Hungary but in America’s own Republican Party as well.

If I think about the three pillars that have stabilized the world since I became a journalist in 1978 — a strong America committed to protecting a liberal global order with the help of healthy multilateral institutions like NATO, a steadily growing China always there to buoy the world economy, and mostly stable borders in Europe and the developing world — all three are being shaken by big choices by big players over the last decade

In college at New York University, in 2013, I had spent a semester of study abroad in the United Arab Emirates; I am now a master’s candidate at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and at the time of Wahedk87’s email I was a week away from traveling to Qatar. My “dirty mission” was my thesis research, and the “confidential information” I sought was about the labor conditions of migrant workers in the capital, Doha.

When I landed in Qatar in June, Wahedk87’s threat became clear. I was denied entry and detained at the airport in Doha. Qatari immigration officers informed me that my name appeared on a “blacklist” maintained by member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council because I had “made trouble” in the U.A.E. Later, Emirati officials told the State Department that they had placed me on the blacklist for unspecified “security-related reasons.”

From this, I suspect that it was the U.A.E., an ally of the American government, that hacked my email and shared its intelligence about my research plans with the Qatari authorities

Obesity is a touchy subject in the emirate. Data from the International Association for the Study of Obesity shows that Qatar has the highest obesity rates in the Mideast, and worse rates are mostly found only in a few South Pacific countries. Some 34 percent of Qatar’s men and 45 percent of its women are obese, defined as a body mass index of more than 30.

They are based on the emirate’s total population of about 1.9 million, but most of those are migrant workers. Qatari citizens number only about 250,000. Since most of the migrant workers are construction and other manual laborers, obesity rates among citizens are likely to be far higher than overall figures suggest.

Saudi Arabia, which itself is a close ally of Washington, has not only undermined Western efforts to press for compromise, but has also revealed diminished United States influence across the Arab world.

The Saudis, though, are not alone in this. Two other United States allies, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, have also supported the Egyptian military and sought to push back against Western entreaties

There is a strong rivalry between Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies of the Egyptian military, on the one hand, and Qatar and Turkey, on the other, both of which are big supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

A prominent activist in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for "defaming" the country on social media.

Mansoor was cleared of co-operating with a terrorist organisation, but found guilty of using social media sites to "publish false information that damages the country's reputation" and to "spread hatred and sectarianism", local media reported on Wednesday.

Despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East and promoting hi-tech sectors and innovations, the UAE remains restrictive on political activity.

In mere weeks, Joe Biden will stride into the Oval Office and peer out at a world still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and at growing threats from resurgent US adversaries such as China and Russia. Leaders around the world will have to adapt to a new US administration and its potentially dramatic changes in policy and rhetoric.

We asked Atlantic Council experts to preview what Biden’s election means not just for regional heavyweights, but also for smaller nations who could play an outsized role in US foreign policy over the next four years.

GERMANY: A brighter tone and realistic expectations could rehabilitate relationship

dirtiest companies for more than a century; now rwe is aiming to be among the cleanest

On October 1st it agreed to buy the renewable-energy business of Consolidated Edison (ConEd), an American utility, for $6.8bn. Three days later it signed an agreement with Germany’s regional and federal governments to bring forward plans to stop generating electricity with lignite, an especially filthy sort of coal, by eight years to 2030

The recent announcements are part of a much bigger realignment. In November last year it unveiled plans to invest €50bn ($50bn) to increase renewable-power capacity from 25 to 50 gigawatts (gw) within eight years, about a third of its current total.

WASHINGTON — Russian warplanes have carried out airstrikes to support Turkey’s offensive in northern Syria against the Islamic State, an important evolution in a budding Russian-Turkish partnership. The deepening ties threaten to marginalize the United States in the struggle to shape Syria’s ultimate fate.

Russia and Turkey had already been involved in a joint effort to establish a cease-fire in Syria — one that does not involve the United States. At the same time, ties between the United States and Turkey have come under growing strain as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has become increasingly alarmed about the Kurdish forces known as the Y.P.G. The United States has aligned itself with those forces to combat the Islamic State in Syria.

The Russians notified the United States about the flights using a special hotline between Russian forces in Syria and the American air war command at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The hotline’s goal is to “deconflict” air missions carried out by the Russians and the American-led coalition.