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Yemen Moves to Reassure Southerners ahead of Talks

Yemeni President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi has ordered forming two panels to resolve lingering grievances of southerners in a new move to get them to join a stalled national dialogue, state media said on Tuesday.

One commission will be to resolve disputes over lands that many southerners claim the previous regime seized from them and the other to handle the cases of civil servants and security officials fired from their jobs, official news agency SANA said.

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Egypt Show Host Acquitted of Morsi Murder Incitement

An Egyptian court on Tuesday acquitted a television show presenter on charges of trying to incite President Mohamed Morsi's murder, a judicial official said.

Tawfiq Okasha, who hosted a show on his Faraeen television station, was put on trial after several people complained to the court that he called on Egyptians to overthrow Morsi and kill him.

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Pro-Damascus Palestinian Groups Want Yarmuk 'Demilitarized'

Pro-Damascus Palestinian groups in Syria said on Tuesday that Yarmuk camp in the south of the capital must be "demilitarized", and called on Palestinian factions to help refugees who fled camp violence to return home.

Violence has struck several refugee camps since March 2011, when the revolt erupted in Syria, which is home to some 490,000 Palestinians.

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Amnesty Demands Egypt Stop Military Trial of Journalist

Advocacy group Amnesty International has called for the release of an Egyptian journalist facing military trial under a controversial law that allows the army to court-martial civilians.

The army arrested Mohamed Sabry, a freelance video journalist and an activist who opposed military trials, in the eastern Sinai peninsula while he was working on a story for the Reuters news agency, Amnesty International said.

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Of Books and Bombs: Schooling in Syria's Rebel Zone

The Ottoman-era palace now serving as their school in the rebel-held part of Aleppo's historic center may have a gracious interior court and high ceilings.

But it's the walls, the solid stone walls, that are the reason the children are taking their classes there.

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Knesset Speaker Says Hagel Stance 'Cause for Concern'

The foreign policy outlook of U.S. President Barak Obama's nominee for defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, is "cause for concern" for Israel, parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin said on Tuesday.

"This concept of 'splendid isolation' which Hagel espouses changes U.S. strategy in the world and accordingly it also affects Israel," Rivlin said in a statement. "This outlook must give Israel cause for concern but not scare it," said Rivlin, adding it was "important that Israel know how to deal with" such a worldview.

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Amnesty Demands Egypt Stop Military Trial of Journalist

Advocacy group Amnesty International has called for the release of an Egyptian journalist facing military trial under a controversial law that allows the army to court-martial civilians.

The army arrested Mohamed Sabry, a freelance video journalist and an activist who opposed military trials, in the eastern Sinai peninsula while he was working on a story for the Reuters news agency, Amnesty International said.

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Shiites Hold Counter-Demos in Southern Iraq

Thousands took to the streets in predominantly Shiite southern Iraq on Tuesday in a show of support for the Shiite premier after more than two weeks of protests in the mainly Sunni Arab north and west.

The loyalist rallies are the latest twist in a long-running standoff within Iraq's unity government between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his mainly Sunni Arab critics who accuse him of abusing counter-terror legislation to persecute the minority community.

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Saudi Beheads Syrian for Drug Trafficking

Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded a Syrian convicted of trafficking a large amount of narcotic pills, the interior ministry said, in the first execution in the kingdom this year.

Mohammed Darwish was arrested "as he was trafficking a large amount of narcotic pills into the kingdom," the ministry said in a statement carried by official news agency SPA.

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'Stampede' Hurts Jordan Aid Workers Helping Syrian Refugees

Humanitarian workers distributing aid to Syrian refugees in northern Jordan after destructive rains were injured in a "stampede" on Tuesday, officials said.

"Refugees started to push each other as they ran towards the aid workers. They hurled stones at each other and there was a stampede, which hurt some aid workers," Anmar Hmud, a government spokesman for refugee affairs, told Agence France Presse.

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