SEOUL: North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un announced Friday night his country will carry out no more nuclear or intercontinental ballistic missile tests and will shut down its atomic test site, the North's state media reported Saturday. The declaration, long sought by the US, will be seen as a crucial step in the fast diplomatic dance on and around the...
SEOUL: North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un announced Friday night his country will carry out no more nuclear or intercontinental ballistic missile tests and will shut down its atomic test site, the North's state media reported Saturday. The declaration, long sought by the US, will be seen as a crucial step in the fast diplomatic dance on and around the...
RIYADH: Four Saudi officers were shot dead and four others wounded Thursday when their checkpoint came under gunfire in southern Asir province, state media said citing the interior ministry. Three officers were instantly killed when the outpost came under attack, the Saudi Press Agency reported, without specifying who was behind it. "Security officials have succeeded in identifying a number of...
France´s highest administrative court has upheld a decision to deny a French passport to an Algerian Muslim who refused to shake hands with officials during her citizenship ceremony, according to a ruling seen by AFP Thursday. The woman argued that her "religious beliefs" prevented her from shaking hands with a senior official presiding over the citizenship ceremony in the southeastern...
LONDON: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed that New Delhi tried to contact Islamabad before making news of the surgical strikes public, The Times of India reported. “India had repeatedly attempted to contact Pakistan government to inform them about the top-secret operation conducted by the Indian forces,” claimed Modi while attending an event in London. On September 28, 2016, India claimed that the...
THE HAGUE: Britain accused Russia on Wednesday of breaking the two-decade international ban on chemical weapons, at emergency talks on last month’s poisoning with a nerve agent of a former Russian spy. The accusations came as diplomats from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) met behind closed-doors in The Hague to discuss the crisis. Britain’s broadcasting watchdog...
ANKARA: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday called snap elections in Turkey for June 24, bringing the polls forward by over a year-and-a-half after a call from his main nationalist ally. Both presidential and parliamentary elections will be held on the same day. They had originally been scheduled for November 3, 2019. Erdogan made the announcement in an address at...
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced Wednesday that he would no longer use the hugely popular messaging app Telegram, shifting instead to domestic services. The announcement came as rumours continued that Iran would soon block Telegram, built by Russian tech guru Pavel Durov and the most popular social media service in the country with some 40 million users —...
Former US first lady Barbara Bush died Tuesday at the age of 92, triggering an outpouring of praise for the matriarch of a Republican family once at the apex of American politics. Barbara and George H. W Bush were married for 73 years, and the widower “of course is heart-broken to lose his beloved Barbara,” his chief of staff Jean...
International investigators on Tuesday entered a Syrian town hit by an alleged chemical attack, after days of delay and warnings by Western powers that crucial evidence had likely been removed. The suspected gas attack on April 7 on Douma, near Damascus, reportedly left more than 40 people dead and was blamed by Western powers on the regime of Syrian President...
PALM BEACH: US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States is engaged in direct talks at “extremely high levels” with North Korea to try to set up a summit between him and its leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump made the comment as he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe opened two days of talks at the president’s Mar-a-Lago...
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia would send troops to Syria under the US-led coalition if a decision was taken to widen it, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Tuesday. “We are in discussion with the US and have been since the beginning of the Syrian crisis about sending forces into Syria,” Jubeir told a news conference in Riyadh with UN Secretary-General Antonio...
LONDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May, facing a rowdy session of parliament on Monday, defended her decision to join US-led missile strikes against Syria without first seeking parliament’s authorization. May justified her action in bypassing a parliament vote on military action, saying she was driven by the need to decide quickly about joining the United States and France in Saturday’s...
Dhaka, Bangladesh: Bangladesh’s highest court has ruled that a woman who took her life four years ago is a Muslim and can be buried alongside her husband, ending a high-profile legal battle over interfaith marriage. The court ruled last week that Hosne Ara Lazu did convert to Islam after marrying Humayun Farid Lazu in 2013, despite her family’s insistence that...
MOSCOW/DAMASCUS: Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Sunday that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctions. In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, Putin and Rouhani agreed that the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in...
LONDON/DAMASCUS: Western powers have no plans for further missile strikes on Syria but will assess their options if Damascus uses chemical weapons again, Britain’s foreign minister said on Sunday as debate raged over the legality and effectiveness of the raids. US, French and British missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program on Saturday in retaliation for...
WASHINGTON/BEIRUT: Western powers said Saturday their missile attacks struck at the heart of Syria’s chemical weapons program, but the restrained assault appeared unlikely to halt Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s progress in the seven-year-old civil war. The United States, France and Britain launched 105 missiles overnight in retaliation for a suspected poison gas attack in Syria a week ago, targeting what...