The first visit by a pope to the Arabian peninsula will take place in February when Francis travels to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, the Vatican said on Thursday. The Feb. 3-5 trip, Francis latest to a predominantly Muslim nation, will be centred around the theme of inter-religious peace. The Vatican said the pope had accepted an invitation from Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and the small Catholic community there.

An Egyptian criminal court sentenced Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and five others Brotherhood figures to life in prison on Wednesday on violence-related charges which date back to 2013. Brotherhood leaders Khairat El-Shater and Mostafa Abdel-Azim, and two others, were also among those convicted to life in prison by the verdict on Wednesday. Other leading figures including Essam El-Erian, Mohamed El-Beltagy and former parliament speaker Saad Al-Katatni were acquitted, as were three other Brotherhood members.

Ukrainian authorities on Monday raided three Orthodox churches aligned to Russia as political and religious tensions between the two countries grow. Police and security services also searched the homes of priests who have declared their allegiance to the Russian branch of the Orthodox church, regional police spokeswoman Alla Vashchenko told AFP.

The Vatican expressed concern over the status of Jerusalem on Monday as Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held their first meeting since the United States stirred international anxiety by moving its embassy there. The two embraced and kissed on the cheek as the pontiff welcomed Abbas to a library in the Vatican s Apostolic Palace for a private, 20-minute meeting.

Boko Haram jihadists killed two soldiers and seriously wounded five militia members in separate attacks in the troubled northeast of the country, military and militia sources told AFP Sunday. Gunmen from Boko Haram faction the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) attacked a remote base in Buni Gari village, in Yobe state, 60 kilometres (37 miles) from the state capital Damaturu on Saturday, with six of the attackers killed.

An Egyptian misdemeanour court sentenced on Wednesday 99 people to one year in prison for participating in violent protests that erupted over the death of a man in police custody in January. The 22-year-old Mohamed Abdel-Hakim, known as Afroto, had died in hospital shortly after being arrested on suspicion of drug dealing.

Afghanistan s President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday announced a 12-person team for prospective peace talks with the Taliban, as the UN renewed calls for direct negotiations between Kabul and the insurgents. The Afghan government, Western diplomats and United Nations officials have in recent weeks raised hopes of finally reaching a deal to end the Taliban s 17-year fight.

One of the villas searched by Turkish police for the remains of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi belonged to a Saudi businessman, reports said Tuesday. Crime scene investigators using sniffer dogs and drones searched the Saudi businessman s residence and an adjacent villa during a 10-hour probe on Monday in the northwestern province of Yalova, Hurriyet daily reported.

An assault by the Islamic State (IS) militant group in eastern Syria has killed at least 92 US-backed fighters in three days, a war monitor said Monday. It was the highest death toll the jihadist group has inflicted against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in a single offensive, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Court of Cassation on Sunday upheld the death sentence against nine defendants involved in the assassination of former top prosecutor Hisham Barakat. The Cairo Criminal Court, headed by Judge Hassan Farid, sentenced 28 defendants to death on July 22, 2017 for the assassination of Barakat and sentenced 15 others to life in prison.

Egypt s security forces killed 12 terrorists in an exchange of fire on Thursday in North Sinai, the ministry of interior said. The National Security Agency had received information that a group of terrorist suspects was using an abandoned yard in El-Arish city as a hideout, and a shootout broke out when security forces attempted to conduct a raid on the hideout.

Wearing a white cassock and hood, and surrounded by a number of monks in black, Yacoub El-Maqary faces the camera. Smiling, the defrocked monk delivers his message: he declares himself patriarch and head of the Coptic Orthodox Church. The video was recorded at an unlicensed monastery in northern Egypt in early September; in the recording, Yacoub is surrounded by ten monks he had ordained himself, some looking down at the floor to avoid the camera.

Egypt s Grand Mufti Shawki Allam met on Tuesday with a high-level British delegation led by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the minister of state for the Commonwealth and United Nations, to discuss enhancing religious cooperation between Egypt s Dar Al-Iftaa and Britain, particularly in regards to combating extremism, terrorism, and Islamophobia. During his meeting with the British delegation, Allam stressed that cooperation among world nations in fighting terrorism and extremism has become a necessity as the phenomenon threatens everyone, not just one state or region.

Egypt is following the Saudi investigations into the killing of a young Egyptian pharmacist in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, last week, stated the foreign ministry on Friday. The Egyptian embassy in Jeddah commissioned its legal advisor to follow the investigations of the Saudi prosecution, the ministry said in a statement. It added that legal procedures are taken to return the body of the victim to his homeland.

Pope Tawadros II re-consecrated a newly renovated St Mark s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo on Sunday, marking fifty years since the building was first inaugurated. In a sermon last week, the pope stated that the celebration of the cathedral s golden jubilee would be limited to liturgical prayers only, due to what he described as "painful events" of the incident of the monastery of St. Samuel.

Dar al-Iftaa has established an animation unit to respond to citizens’ religious questions on terrorism through short animated replies in an easy and attractive way as part of its continuous efforts to counter extremist thought, Al-Ahram news website reported. The new unit will present motion graphics in response to extremist ideas reiterated by terrorist groups. Coinciding with the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (Moulid) on November 20, Dar al-Iftaa’s new unit will present cartoons to respond to Muslims who forbid celebrating the Moulid. It will then present cartoons in response to extremists who accuse others of being infidels, as well as to clarify the ideas of jihad and caliphate in Islam.

The Israeli army continued on Tuesday its attack against the besieged Gaza Strip, as the Palestinian resistance movement launched over 400 rockets towards Israeli northern towns. The updates in Gaza came after an Israeli attempt to conduct a military operation inside the strip on Sunday. The escalation resulted in the death of seven Palestinians including one of Hamas s military commanders, while one Israeli soldier commander was also killed.

Six people were killed when a suicide bomber blew himself up in Kabul Monday, close to where scores of Afghans had been protesting against Taliban attacks on the minority Hazara ethnic group. The attack is the latest in a wave of violence across war-torn Afghanistan as the Taliban intensify pressure on beleaguered government security forces, which are suffering record high casualties.

Egypt s interior ministry said on Monday it foiled an attack on a security checkpoint in North Sinai s El-Arish, state-run MENA news agency reported. The police s central security forces thwarted the attempted suicide bombing at a checkpoint on the ring road in El-Arish.

Egypt s official gazette published on Sunday the names of 164 members of the hard-line Islamist movement Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya who were placed on a terrorism list by a Cairo criminal court on 28 October. The court placed the group, which waged an armed insurgency in the 1990s but renounced violence more than a decade ago, on a "terrorist entities" list, and placed 164 of its members on the terrorism list for five years.

When a group of Coptic Christian families set out to visit the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confessor in Minya they could have no idea they would not all be returning home. But on their return journey the buses carrying the pilgrims were attacked, leaving seven dead and 18 injured. The injured were transferred to Minya local hospitals and then to Cairo s 6 October district hospital in Sheikh Zayed.