• About 100 Egyptian nationals living in Qatar have been asked by Doha authorities to leave the country within a few weeks time, according to an Egyptian opposition figure based abroad who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. 

   

  The move by Qatar comes after Egypt requested that the figures — all of whom are affiliated with Islamist groups — be delivered to Egyptian authorities, said the source.
• Qatar has given the Egyptian nationals notice to leave the country amid a diplomatic rapprochement between Doha and Cairo that has blossomed over the past year. 
• Helping bridge the distance between Doha and Cairo are the increasingly strained relations between the current Egyptian administration and its long-standing Gulf backers in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as a number of economic investment opportunities, with potential for Egypt’s need for foreign direct investment to soothe its distressed balance of payments to align with Qatari interest in a number of key strategic economic sectors, including agriculture and telecommunications. 
• Qatari authorities requested 250 Egyptian nationals, including Islamist opposition figure Abdallah al-Sherif, who ran a series of satirical programs on YouTube and Al Jazeera, to leave the country when diplomatic ties were first being established in 2022
• With Cairo and Ankara establishing closer ties in 2021, the Turkish government instructed opposition media channels broadcasting from Turkish soil to stop criticizing Sisi and his government.

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• Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threatened to fundamentally alter the decades-old U.S.-Saudi relationship and impose significant economic costs on the United States if it retaliated against the oil cuts
• It is unclear whether the crown prince’s threat was conveyed directly to U.S. officials or intercepted through electronic eavesdropping, but his dramatic outburst reveals the tension at the heart of a relationship long premised on oil-for-security but rapidly evolving as China takes a growing interest in the Middle East and the United States assesses its own interests as the world’s largest oil producer.
• Biden, who pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” as a presidential candidate, scarcely communicates with the crown prince but the president’s top aides have gradually rebuilt ties with him hoping the two nations can work together on pressing issues, including a long-sought peace deal in Yemen, a sustained cease-fire in Sudan, counterterrorism challenges and continued disagreements over the supply of oil.
• U.S. officials say the U.S.-Saudi relationship is too important to let languish given Riyadh’s economic and political clout and Beijing’s courtship of traditional U.S. partners in the Middle East.
• Following Blinken’s meetings, differences appeared to remain over Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to generate nuclear power, seen by Washington and others as a potential proliferation risk, and the notion that the United States has a right to admonish the kingdom over its human rights record
• a steady stream of high-level U.S. meetings in the kingdom in recent months, including trips by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, CIA Director William J. Burns, Biden’s top Middle East adviser Brett McGurk, and his senior energy security official Amos Hochstein.
• The oil-rich country has sought to present itself as a global player unmoored to Washington. In recent months, Riyadh has been on a diplomatic tear, winding down hostilities in Yemen, restoring relations with arch-nemesis Iran, inviting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab League after a decade-plus ban, and ending its regional tiff with Qatar.

• Saudi Arabia’s relationship with China, which the United States considers its top economic and security competitor, was also raised during Blinken’s news conference in Riyadh. The top U.S. diplomat denied any suggestion that the United States was forcing Saudi Arabia to choose between Washington and Beijing.

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  A second leaked U.S. intelligence document from December warned that Saudi Arabia plans to expand its “transactional relationship” with China by procuring drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and mass surveillance systems from Beijing. But U.S. officials say those warnings were exaggerated and did not come to fruition.
• “China is the world’s second-largest economy. China is our largest trading partner. So naturally, there is a lot of interaction … and that cooperation is likely to grow,” he said. “But we still have a robust security partnership with the U.S. That security partnership is refreshed on an almost daily basis.”

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• The United Kingdom’s Home Office has provided more than £3m in funding to Turkish border forces in the last year to prevent migrants from reaching the UK
• Funding for Turkey’s border force operations has increased substantially from 2019, when £14,000 was given to Turkish police and coastguard for maritime border security training, according to documents obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests. That figure rose to £425,000 in 2021-22 for training and equipment and up to £3m this year for “return and reintegration assistance” training and personnel.
• Last year Turkey said it “turned back” 238,448 migrants at its eastern border with Iran. Video evidence seen by the Guardian shows cases of extreme violence and force used against Afghan migrants attempting to cross the border into Turkey. This includes the authorities firing live bullet rounds as people flee, including at the feet of children; beatings using rifle butts; robberies; humiliation tactics and pushing people back to the other side of the border.
• strategically crucial to border securitisation
• Home Office staff now outnumber diplomats working in Turkey
• “The Home Office is seen by international partners as quite hostile, quite adversarial,” said a senior government source with knowledge of the department’s operations in Turkey. “The FCDO, on the other hand, is viewed as relatively collegiate and collaborative. In this context, there are obvious tensions in the approach and the culture among staff.”
• “Whether on the border between Turkey and Iran, or those of France or Belgium, this government is covertly funding others to do its dirty work, while at the same time ramping up its xenophobic rhetoric against the few that do finally make it here.”

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• The U.S. government is suspending food aid to Ethiopia after an investigation uncovered a widespread scheme to steal donated food, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) said Thursday, a move that will affect millions of the world’s poorest people. Leaked documents given to donors and shared with The Washington Post indicate that the scheme was coordinated by elements within both the federal and regional governments.
• Officials have been diverting aid from those who need it to feed the military and ex-combatants, and selling it on the open market to millers who reexported the flour
• “The scheme appears to be orchestrated by federal and regional Government of Ethiopia (GoE) entities, with military units across the country benefiting from humanitarian assistance.”
• Africa’s second most populous nation is struggling to feed about 20 million citizens — about a sixth of the population — following a civil war, drought and rampant inflation
• Stopping the aid will further roil the volatile Horn of Africa region, already hammered by a civil war in Sudan that has displaced more than 1.3 million people in six weeks and after constant fighting pushed drought-stricken Somalia to the edge of famine
• Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch released a report saying ethnic cleansing was continuing in parts of the northern region of Tigray
• Food from the United States, Ukraine, Japan and France donated to the United Nations World Food Program has been stolen
• USAID announced just over a month ago that it was suspending all aid to the northern region of Tigray, where a civil war killed hundreds of thousands of people. The May 3 statement from USAID chief Samantha Power said, “Food aid, intended for the people of Tigray suffering under famine-like conditions, was being diverted and sold on the local market.” But it did not apportion blame.
• More than 90 percent of Tigrayans need food aid

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• an anti-woke centrism that is increasingly prominent in American media and politics today, particularly among powerful White men who live on the coasts and don’t identify as Republicans or conservatives. It’s deeply flawed, and it’s pushing some important U.S. institutions to make bad decisions
• this is not the centrism of say, President Biden, who opposes some left-wing causes but doesn’t spend a lot of time deriding people who support them. Anti-woke centrism is really about emphasizing differences with progressives, who are inaccurately cast as Twitter-obsessed college graduates who constantly use terms like Latinx and are out of touch with ordinary Democratic voters.
• this kind of centrism isn’t usually described with that term by the people who practice it. Instead, they cast themselves as nonideological and neutral, while arguing that those who criticize them are dogmatic and nonobjective
• It really matters that these anti-woke centrists often live in deeply Democratic areas. If you are in a red state, like me, you are constantly in fear of your state government adopting conservative policies — such as new limitations on reproductive freedom, transgender rights and honest education about race. But if you live in D.C. New York City or San Francisco, a much more realistic concern is that a “woke” liberal with whom you don’t agree gains political power — or sharply criticizes you in public.
• there has never been a right to voice your opinion without the possibility of being shamed or shunned (terms without precise meanings) — and there shouldn’t be. Shaming and shunning people are free expression, too
• The left-wing movements of the past decade, particularly Black Lives Matter, say America is dominated by white supremacy, patriarchy and out of control capitalism. So it is not surprising that rich White men view these movements, particularly their more radical ideas, with some skepticism.
• There was plenty of groupthink inside elite news outlets such as the Times before Twitter existed — but not really an easy way to alert their reporters to police shootings of unarmed Black men.
• when we have a left that is pushing America to finish the work of the 1960s and create a true multicultural democracy and a right that is banning Black intellectual ideas from public schools, it’s a huge mistake for powerful non-Republicans in society to spend so much time bashing the left
• It is disappointing that some of the most powerful people in the country think the problem in America is that people are too critical of the police and insufficiently critical of transgender activists. I can’t tell if the anti-woke don’t understand what’s actually happening in America — or if they actively oppose a more equitable country.

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