International

12-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Agencies PARIS: French authorities have shut down the only school in Paris that caters to Muslims, media reported, saying that the crackdown on the community was intensifying. According to the publication, the 4.5 million strong ‘Muslim Community’ in the country is facing increasing pressure from …

12-12-2020 TEHRAN: Iran has executed a once-exiled journalist over his online work that helped inspire nationwide economic protests in 2017, authorities have said. Iranian state television, the state-run IRNA news agency and the semi-official Nour news agency all said Ruhollah Zam was hanged early on Saturday morning. In June, a …

12-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report + Agencies LONDON/ MELBOURNE/ KARACHI: A British-Pakistan has accused officers of the Metropolitan Police as well as Immigration and Newham Council officials of a “campaign of discrimination, harassment, and persecution”. Iqbal Sethi’s troubles started on September 19 last year when a joint team …

11-12-2020 RABAT/ WASHINGTON: Morocco on Thursday agreed to normalize ties with Israel under a US-brokered deal, becoming the fourth Arab nation to set aside hostilities with the Jewish state in the past four months. It joins the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in beginning to forge deals with Israel, …

11-12-2020 BEIRUT/ UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon on Friday sentenced Hezbollah operative Salim Ayache to five concurrent life sentences in absentia for the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 21 others. The Hezbollah operative had a “central,” “leading role” as part of the …

11-12-2020 WASHINGTON/ RIYADH: United States lawmakers have slammed Saudi Arabia for the sentencing of a prominent US-Saudi doctor to six years in prison, calling the charges against Dr Walid Fitaihi “baseless and politically motivated”. In a statement on Thursday, five Democratic US senators called on the Saudi authorities to immediately …

10-12-2020 KHAF/ TEHRAN- GHORYAN/ KABUL: Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani and his Afghan counterpart, Ashraf Ghani officially inaugurated Khaf-Herat railway in a ceremony on Thursday in line with expanding mutual relations between the two neighboring countries. The project connects the eastern city of Khaf in Iran to the western city of …

10-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report KABUL/ JALALABAD/ ISLAMABAD: Another Shia journalist shot dead in Afghanistan along with her driver but neither the “West” could still recognize Shias nor wants to know who are Shias, who kills them, why they are being genocide, where they live, what is their …

10-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI/ OTTAWA/ ISLAMABAD: The Indian government’s offer to amend three laws in a set of new agricultural rules that has led to weeks of protests was rejected by farmers on Wednesday, who vowed to intensify demonstrations. The farmers maintained that …

10-12-2020 LONDON/ NEW YORK: United States drug-maker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said on Wednesday that documents related to their development of a COVID-19 vaccine had been “unlawfully accessed” in a cyber-attack on Europe’s medicines regulator. The European Medicines Agency (EMA), responsible for assessing and approving medicines and vaccines …