Kuwait imposed on Monday new travel restrictions to contain the spread of the Omicron COVID-19 variant, Kuwait's Center for Government Communication said. According to a decision made by the Kuwaiti government on Monday, passengers arriving in Kuwait are required to conduct a PCR test within 48 hours before arrival and take home quarantine for 10 days, while the decision is effective as of Dec. 26.

In order to end the quarantine, they must conduct a PCR test after 72 hours of quarantine, the center said on Twitter.

Starting from Jan. 2, 2022, if nine months have passed since the second dose of vaccination, the person is considered not fully immunized and cannot travel unless he or she takes a booster dose of approved vaccines, it said.

On Nov. 27, Kuwait decided to suspend direct flights with nine African countries over the new COVID-19 Omicron variant./ Agencies

 Price of Kuwaiti crude oil up by 42 cents Tuesday to reach USD 72.69 pb, compared with USD 72.27 pb Monday, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC) said Wednesday. Globally, Brent crude was also up by USD 2.46 to USD 73.98 pb and West Texas Intermediate also went up by USD 2.51 to USD 71.12 pb./Kuna  

Turkey rescued at least 143 asylum seekers from the Aegean Sea in two separate incidents, the Turkish Coast Guard Command said Tuesday.

In Cesme and Dikili districts in the western province of Izmir, coast guard teams rescued 137 asylum seekers who were illegally pushed back by Greek officials, said the command.

Separately, teams saved six additional asylum seekers who similarly were pushed back by Greek officials in the Aegean Sea off Bodrum district in southwestern Mugla province.

Turkey and human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Greece’s illegal practice of pushing back asylum seekers, saying it violates international law and humanitarian values by endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants, including women and children.

Turkey has been a key transit point for asylum seekers aiming to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution.

It already hosts 4 million refugees, more than any other country, and is taking new security measures on its borders to humanely prevent a new influx of migrants./aa

The Turkish lira is moving towards a level where it will find its true balance, Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati said Tuesday. 

"We have a strong economic model. The basis of our model is high growth and a low current account deficit," he said in a live interview with the TRT Haber news channel.

"Turkey will seize this historic opportunity. We will solve the current account deficit problem through achieving macroeconomic stability and increasing production and exports," he said.

On the high fluctuations in exchange rates seen in recent weeks, he said "Turkey's macroeconomic indicators have no way of pushing the value of the US dollar against the Turkish lira that high. The Turkish lira is moving towards a level where it will find its true balance."

Nebati's comments came hours after the Treasury and Finance Ministry announced a new measure in which Turkey will compensate lira depositors for foreign currency fluctuations while encouraging citizens to move towards Turkish lira-based assets.

Under the facility, if the yield remains below the exchange rate difference between the account opening and its maturity dates despite the earned interest, the Treasury will compensate the depositor. The new FX-protected Turkish lira deposits tool will be available for individuals who have a lira deposit account with a maturity of three, six, nine or 12 months.

"The Treasury and Finance Ministry has worked with the Central Bank for days, studying alternative scenarios. Even in the worst case scenario, individuals come out better off," he said.

Nebati said the Turkish government will never back down from its fiscal policy and it will make transparent economic policies and take macroeconomic measures that allow more foreseeability.

He emphasized that Turkey's economy has the ability to rapidly recover from shocks and it has proven that to the world many times in the past.

Turkey's economy posted growth in 2020 despite coronavirus-related lockdowns throughout the world, Nebati reminded, noting that he expects the Turkish economy to post a double-digit growth figure this year.

The minister also said the government will simplify the value added tax and expedite the tax return process./aa

Fatima Jasim is facing a new challenge in her makeshift tent at Idlib's Zifir Camp, where she took shelter after fleeing a war imposed by Syria's Bashar al-Asad regime and its Russian allies. 

Incessant rains have wrecked not only Fatima's tent but also the shelters of over 3,700 Syrian refugees in the surrounding villages of Idlib near the Turkish border, who are currently without a place to sleep during the harsh winter.

"Everyone living here requires various kinds of help," she told Anadolu Agency.

Rain and flooding hit the refugee camps in northwest Syria, affecting tens of thousands of people. Families fleeing Syria's civil conflict, which began in early 2011 when the Assad regime repressed pro-democracy protests, are now living in makeshift tents in Idlib's camps.

"We are unable to sleep in our tents at night. Water seeps into the tents. My husband is old and unable to move due to the bitter cold. We're starving and it's raining at the same time," Fatima said of the camp's situation, adding "only Allah understands our plight."

She says that cooking is difficult for her. 

"We cook the food by burning the waste plastic bags I collect," she added.

She asked international humanitarian agencies to provide food, clothing and fuel assistance, emphasizing that they are living in extremely terrible conditions.

Over 500 tents have become unusable, Mohammed Hallaj, director of the Syria Emergency Response Coordinator, told Anadolu Agency. At least 3,742 families have been affected by the rains, and 2,145 families' tents have been damaged by floodwaters," he added.

The roads of 104 rain-affected camps are closed, he said.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, some 6.6 million Syrians have been forced to leave the country over the past decade. 

‘I want to go home' 

Ahmad Muhammed, another resident of Zifir Camp, which was wrecked by the rains, also said living conditions are challenging because they are unable to sleep on rainy nights, urging international donors to deliver assistance as quickly as possible during this difficult time.

"We don't have tarps to shelter us from the weather, and rainfall has already entered our tent," he said.

"This is something we want to get rid of. Now all I want to do is get back home, to provide for my children's basic needs and to make enough money to purchase the bread," he said, expressing his frustration, visibly weary by the current difficulties they are facing as a result of the Assad regime and extreme weather conditions. 

Situation in Idlib 

At the Astana meeting in 2017, Turkey, Russia and Iran decided to establish four "de-escalation zones" in areas outside of Assad's control.

The regime, Iran-backed terrorists and Russia intensified their attacks, taking three of the four districts and marching on Idlib. Despite the fact that Turkey and Russia struck an additional agreement in September 2018 to bolster the cease-fire, the strikes resumed in May 2019.

The cease-fire has been mainly maintained since the new agreement between Turkey and Russia on March 5, 2020.

Approximately 2 million people fleeing the attacks had to travel to areas near the Turkish border between 2017 and 2020./aa

A Palestinian NGO has raised the alarm on the deteriorating health condition of a hunger-striking Palestinian detainee in “Israel”.

Hisham Abu Hawwash, 40, has been on hunger strike for 127 days in protest of his detention without trial.

“Abu Hawwash is facing a very serious health condition,” the Palestinian Prisoner Society said in a statement on Tuesday.

It said prison authorities refuse to transfer the Palestinian detainee from his prison hospital to a civilian hospital for treatment.

On Sunday, [Israel’s] Supreme Court rejected an appeal to suspend Abu Hawwash’s administrative detention and transfer him to a civilian hospital.

Abu Hawwash, from the town of Dura in southern West Bank, was detained by “Israeli” forces on October 27, 2020 and placed under administrative detention.

The policy of administrative detention allows Israeli authorities to detain anyone for six months without charge or trial, which can be extended indefinitely.

According to the NGO, there are around 4,650 Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails, including at least 500 held without charge or trial./agencies

Stepping up the heated war of words over Ukraine, Russia on Tuesday accused US private military companies (PMC) of preparing provocations with the use of chemical weapons in eastern Ukraine.

Sergey Shoygu said some 120 US mercenaries are now working in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbas region, training the Ukrainian military "for active combat operations."

"It has been reliably established that there are more than 120 employees of American private military companies in the settlements of Avdiivka and Priazovskoye in the Donetsk region,” he told a meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry board in Moscow.

“They equip firing positions in residential buildings and socially significant facilities, train Ukrainian special operations forces and radical armed groups for active combat operations.”

The private firms also delivered "tanks with unidentified chemical components" to the cities of Avdiivka and Krasny Estuary "to commit provocations," Shoygu claimed.

Fighting between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebels in Donbas has seen more than 13,000 people killed since 2014, according to the UN.​​​​​​​

The region is one of several sources of friction between Russia and Ukraine, including Russia’s annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region, which the US, Turkey, and the UN General Assembly view as illegal.

Donbas is in the spotlight as it lies along Ukraine’s border with Russia, where a military buildup has rattled Western nerves.

As Western European countries warn Russia not to take any military action against Ukraine, Russia has accused Ukraine and its allies of provocations and raising tensions./aa

Former US President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will hold a news conference on Jan. 6 -- the first anniversary of the deadly Capitol riots.

"Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020?" Trump said in a statement.

"Does anybody notice that they want to stay as far away from that topic as possible, the numbers don’t work for them, or even come close. The only thing they can do is not talk about it," he wrote.

"Look at what is going on now in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and, to a lesser extent, Michigan where the numbers are horrendously corrupt in Detroit, but the weak Republican RINOs in the Michigan House and Senate don’t want to touch the subject.

"In many ways a RINO is worse than a Radical Left Democrat, because you don’t know where they are coming from and you have no idea how bad they really are for our Country. The good news is there are fewer and fewer RINOs left as we elect strong Patriots who love America," said the former president.

RINO stands for Republican In Name Only.

Trump said he will hold the news conference at his resort Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida "to discuss all of these points and more.

"Until then, remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th," he added.

On Jan. 6, when Congress convened to certify Electoral College votes of then-President-elect Joe Biden, a mob of Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol building.

Ensuing clashes left multiple people dead. Two law enforcement officers took their lives in the aftermath of the raid. Trump is accused of inciting deadly violence./agencies

Attacks against targets in Saudi Arabia by the Yemeni rebel group, Houthis, have doubled in the first nine months of 2021 compared to the same period in 2020, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Houthis are "orchestrating an increasingly intense irregular warfare campaign against Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Gulf," said the report by the US-based, The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank.

It said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah have played a critical role in providing weapons, technology, training, and other assistance to the group.

The CSIS said it analyzed 4,103 Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, within Yemen, and against other targets in the Gulf between Jan. 1, 2016, and Oct. 20, 2021.

According to the research, during the first nine months of 2020, Houthi forces executed a monthly average of 38 attacks but during the same period in 2021. That number rose to an average of 78 attacks, for a total of 702 attacks across the nine-month period.

"This increase was largely driven by the Houthi offensive in Marib, where 199 attacks took place during the first nine months of 2021," it said.

"Houthi forces also carried out 133 total attacks in August 2021 alone—the highest single-month tally since at least January 2016. These attacks, however, were not equally distributed across geographic areas," it added.

Yemen has been engulfed by violence and instability since 2014, when Iran-aligned Houthi rebels captured much of the country, including Sana’a.

A Saudi-led coalition aimed at reinstating the Yemeni government has worsened the situation, causing one of the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crises, with nearly 80%, or about 30 million people, needing humanitarian assistance and protection and more than 13 million in danger of starvation, according to UN estimates.

A recent UN report projected that by the year’s end, the death toll from the seven-year conflict will reach 377,000./agencies

Major US stock indexes opened higher Tuesday, trying to recover from the previous day's losses.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 400 points, or 1.15%, to 35,331 at 9.39 a.m. EDT, after the blue-chip index fell 433 points, or 1.23%, on Monday.

The S&P 500 was up 46 points, or 1.01%, to 4,613 at the time, after declining 52 points, or 1.14%, during the previous session.

The Nasdaq jumped 147 points, or 0.98%, to 15,120 after the tech-heavy index fell 188 points, or 1.24%, on Monday.

The losses came because of rising cases of the omicron coronavirus variant creating worries for investors.

Amid omicron fears, the VIX volatility index rose 6.5% to 22.97 on Monday, but the fear index was down 3.76% to 22.01 shortly after the opening bell Tuesday.

The dollar index was down 0.05% to 96.50, while the yield on 10-year US Treasury notes was flat at 1.450%.

Precious metals were on the rise with gold adding 0.22% to $1,794 per ounce and silver increasing 1.5% to $22.6.

Although crude prices took a dive Monday with the omicron variant wakening the global oil demand outlook, they were in recovery mode Tuesday. The price of Brent crude was trading at $72.88 per barrel with a 1.9% gain, while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude was at $70.21 -- a 2.3% increase.

After weeks of decline, the price of Bitcoin recovered 6.6% to $48,700, while some altcoins were up as much as 15%.

The crypto market's total value was at around $2.26 trillion with a 6.3% daily gain, according to data by digital asset price-tracking website CoinMarketCap./aa