RIYADH: From scrubbing hate-filled school textbooks to a taboo-defying religious sermon, Saudi Arabia is pushing for another kind of normalisation after declining to establish formal relations with Israel — co-existence with Jews. Saudi Arabia has said it will not follow its allies Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in establishing diplomatic relations without a resolution […]
Dubai:Two oil-rich Arab Gulf states suffered severe economic blows on Wednesday, as a major credit agency downgraded Kuwait for the first time and the United Arab Emirates acknowledged its economy would contract to a level last seen in 2009. The agency, Moody’s Investors Service, cut Kuwait’s debt rating and sounded the alarm that its liquid […]
Washington: The US claimed that all pre-2015 UN sanctions against Iran had been restored, a unilateral effort ignored by the international community. In a statement on Saturday night, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the sanctions were being re-imposed according to the “snapback” mechanism under UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 […]
UNITED NATIONS: The virtual edition of the United Nations General Assembly will see a record number of Heads of State and Government address the high-level week through pre-recorded video statements, UN chief Antonio Guterres has said. This year, for the first time in the UN’s 75-year history, Heads of State and Government will not be […]
Washington: US President Donald Trump will not attend in-person the landmark 75th annual UN General Assembly session next week, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has said. The annual session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) commenced on September 15 amid the devastating coronavirus pandemic, with world leaders set to meet virtually for the […]
LONDON: The emergencies chief of the World Health Organization says scientific disagreements over COVID-19 interventions — like masks and vaccines — shouldn’t be treated as “some kind of political football,” but acknowledged that “it isn’t easy for everyone to be on message all the time.” Asked to respond to the open disagreements between U.S. President […]
MOSCOW: Russia said on Thursday it would be a “mistake” to think lasting peace in the Middle East could be secured without resolving the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. The foreign ministry statement came after Israel normalised relations with long-time foes Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the White House on Tuesday. Russia said it noted “progress” […]
MOSCOW: Russia’s sovereign wealth fund has agreed to supply 100 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik-V, to Indian drug company Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, the fund said on Wednesday, as Moscow speeds up plans to distribute its shot abroad. The deal comes after the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) reached agreements with Indian manufacturers to […]
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he wanted to assassinate Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad in 2017, but that his then-secretary of defence Jim Mattis opposed the operation. “I would have rather taken him out. I had him all set,” Trump told the morning show Fox & Friends. “Mattis didn’t want to do it. […]
UNITED NATIONS: Social distancing at the global level will not help as no country could combat COVID-19 alone, President of the UN General Assembly’s 75th session Volkan Bozkir has said, asserting that multilateralism is the “panacea” to all the problems in the world. Bozkir, addressing the UN ambassadors and delegates, said that since the beginning […]