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24-01-2023 JERUSALEM/ DUBAI: An Israeli minister has made a secret trip to the United Arab Emirates ahead of a possible visit to the Gulf state by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli media reports say. Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister, travelled on Sunday to Abu Dhabi, where he met senior …

24-01-2023 UNITED NATIONS: The high representative of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations has condemned the burning of the Muslim holy book by a Swedish-Danish far-right politician as a “vile act”. Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish far-right political party Hard Line, carried out the stunt outside the Turkish embassy …

24-01-2023 TOKYP: Japanese Prime minister Fumio Kishida pledged on Monday to take urgent steps to tackle the country’s declining birth rate, saying it was “now or never” for the world’s oldest society. “Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions,” Kishida said in a …

24-01-2023 BEIRUT: The judge investigating the 2020 Beirut port explosion has charged Lebanon’s then-prime minister, Hassan Diab, and two other former ministers with homicide with probable intent, according to a court summons seen by the Reuters news agency. Other top officials, including the country’s public prosecutor and the head of …

24-01-2023 OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Dozens of Palestinians have protested against threats made by top Israeli politicians to imminently carry out the forced displacement of the Palestinian Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem, home to at least 180 people. The protest took place on Monday after far-right …

24-01-2023 TALLINN/ RIGA/ MOSCOW: Latvia will downgrade its level of diplomatic relations with Russia in solidarity with neighboring Estonia and due to Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine, the country’s top diplomat said. “Due to the ongoing brutal Russian aggression against Ukraine and in solidarity with Estonia, Latvia will lower level …

24-01-2023 BRUSSELS/ TEHRAN: The European Union will step up sanctions targeting Iranian officials deemed to be involved in an ongoing crackdown against anti-government protesters in the country, but will not go as far as declaring Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a “terrorist” organization until further legal processes are …

24-01-2023 Bureau Report + Agencies LONDON/ NEW DELHI/ ISLAMABAD: Days after the BBC aired a documentary on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi titled ‘India: The Modi Question’, former British foreign secretary Jack Straw testified about his government conducting an investigation on its own into the 2002 Gujarat riots in India …

24-01-2023 By SJA Jafri ISLAMABAD/ KARACHI/ LAHORE/ PESHAWAR: Pakistan has suffered a nationwide power outage due to a technical fault that left large swaths of the country, including the capital Islamabad, without electricity. In a statement on Twitter, the energy ministry said the system frequency of the national grid went …

23-01-2023 DAMASCUS: Jamaat al-Tawhid, an affiliate of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a designated terrorist group by the US and United Nations, confirmed to have raided several Syrian army posts on Wednesday. The attacks were carried out in northwestern Syria, close to the border with Turkey. According to media, the group …