A Palestinian child at a school run by NRWA in the Qalandia refugee camp in he occupied West Bank on 14 November 024. (Keystone/AFP/Zain Jaafar)

UN Palestinian aid agency ‘anxious’ ahead of Israeli ban. Legislation banning UNRWA operations in Israel is set to come into force in less than three weeks. As the UN Palestinian aid agency prepares to close its headquarters in East Jerusalem and evacuate its foreign staff, uncertainty looms over war-torn Gaza and the West Bank.

☢️IRAN-EUROPE HUDDLE. Today and tomorrow, Iran is set to meet with the United Kingdom, Germany and France to discuss its nuclear programme and defuse tensions as the Middle Eastern power braces for the return of a pugnacious Donald Trump administration in eight days.

Continued. The confidential talks follow a first round in New York and a second one in Geneva in December, just as Iran announced it would install 6,000 new centrifuges to enrich uranium.

High stakes. Western countries are alarmed at the rapid acceleration of Tehran’s uranium enrichment to near-weapons levels following Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. The US Republican leader is expected to move quickly to ramp up pressure on Iran, with military action floated as one of the options.

🫥ENFORCED DISAPPEARANCES. Twenty years after the adoption of the Convention on Enforced Disappearances, people continue to be abducted or secretly detained by states or armed groups across the world, leaving families to a painstaking and endless search for answers.

A conference on Wednesday and Thursday, organised by the UN and several international rights groups, aims to shed light on a practice often used to instil terror.