FIFA is in talks with Qatari authorities about scrapping the mandatory vaccination requirements for next year’s World Cup. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa bin Abdulaziz Al Thani announced in June that it would require any fans wanting entry into next year’s tournament to be fully inoculated against the …
Read More »Daily Archives: October 4, 2021
Israeli presence in region ’cause for serious concern’: Iran FM
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says the Israeli regime’s presence in the region is a cause for serious concern, stressing the importance of resolving regional problems without foreign interference. Speaking at a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan in Tehran on Monday, Amir-Abdollahian added that the South …
Read More »Taliban say forces destroy Islamic State cell hours after Kabul blast
Taliban government forces destroyed an Islamic State cell in the north of Kabul late on Sunday in a prolonged assault that broke the calm of a normally quiet area of the capital with hours of explosions and gunfire, officials and local residents said. With Afghanistan’s economy close to collapse and …
Read More »Iraq’s IHEC: +21 million electoral IDs distributed ahead of the elections
More than 21 million biometric IDs have been distributed ahead of the polls scheduled to take place on October 10, deputy spokesperson for the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), Nebras Abu Souda, said on Monday. Abu Souda told Shafaq News Agency that the long-term biometric IDs distributed over the past …
Read More »Two win Nobel Prize in medicine for discoveries on how we react to touch, heat
Two scientists won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch, revelations that could lead to new ways of treating pain or even heart disease. Americans David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian identified receptors in the skin that respond to …
Read More »UK warns EU time is running out to fix Northern Ireland accord
The UK government on Monday said it stood ready to abandon a post-Brexit trading accord for Northern Ireland “soon” unless the EU agreed to wholesale changes. Addressing the annual conference of the ruling Conservative party, Brexit minister David Frost said: “The long bad dream of our EU membership is over. …
Read More »Hacker arrested in Ukraine for causing $150 mln worth of damage to global firms
Ukrainian police said on Monday they had arrested a 25-year-old man who hacked more than 100 foreign companies and caused damage worth more than $150 million. The hacker, who was not identified, used phishing attacks and hijacked software that allows computers to be accessed remotely, a police statement said. The …
Read More »Pandora Papers: Hidden riches of world leaders ‘exposed’
A group of 600 investigative journalists on Sunday published new papers over the alleged involvement of a number of world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Abdullah II of Jordan and other high-profile individuals in tax havens. In an “unprecedented leak”, the financial secrets of 35 current and …
Read More »Iraqi PM on October 10 elections: looking forward to “popular participation”
The Iraqi Prime Minister, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, attended on Monday the final electoral simulation ahead of the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 10. Al-Kadhimi tweeted, “We attended the final electoral simulation today – a successful experiment & testimony to the hard work that went into the process.” “This is a reassurance …
Read More »Ethiopia’s parliament confirmed incumbent Abiy Ahmed as prime minister for a five-year term on Monday, cementing his power domestically amid mounting international concern about his government’s handling of the conflict in northern Ethiopia. Abiy’s party won a landslide victory in June’s election. He was sworn in on Monday, and a …
Read More »Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp down in global outage
Facebook Inc’s suite of apps, including popular photo-sharing platform Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp, were down for tens of thousands of users, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com. Reuters could not immediately confirm the issue affecting the services. However, the error message on Facebook’s webpage suggested a Domain Name System …
Read More »Russia test-launches hypersonic cruise missile from submarine for first time
Russia said on Monday it had successfully test-launched a Tsirkon (Zircon) hypersonic cruise missile from a submarine for the first time, a weapon President Vladimir Putin has lauded as part of a new generation of unrivaled arms systems. The defense ministry, which tested firing the Tsirkon missile from a warship …
Read More »Trial of ousted Myanmar leader Suu Kyi taking toll on her health: Lawyer
Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s health has suffered from her frequent appearances before a court run by the military junta that deposed her government, her lawyer said Monday. Suu Kyi went on trial in June, four months after she was taken into custody in a coup that plunged …
Read More »Swedish Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) cartoonist killed in car crash
Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who stirred worldwide controversy in 2007 with offensive drawings depicting the Prophet Mohammed, was killed in a car crash near the southern town of Markaryd on Sunday, police said. Vilks, 75, who had been living under police protection since the drawings were published, was traveling in …
Read More »New 1,956 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 27 deaths reported in Iraq today
Iraq recorded 1,956 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health said today, Monday. The daily epidemiological report on the COVID-19 situation stated that 27 COVID-19 deaths were registered today. On the other hand, 3,184 patients achieved full recovery. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 in Iraq, …
Read More »Australia’s delta COVID-19 outbreak levelling off
Australia’s delta outbreak appears to have levelled off, with more than half the country in extended lockdowns and vaccination rates starting to approach national targets, Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Monday. Hunt said 80 percent of Australians will have had their first COVID-19 jabs this week, while the overall …
Read More »Probe: Catholic Church in France had 3,000 child abusers, two-thirds of them priests
An independent commission examining sex abuse within the Roman Catholic Church in France believes 3,000 child abusers — two-thirds of them priests — have worked in the church over the past 70 years. The estimate was given by the commission president, Jean-Marc Sauvé, in an interview published Sunday in the …
Read More »New Zealand drops its COVID-19 elimination strategy as delta variant persists
New Zealand on Monday abandoned its strategy of eliminating coronavirus, easing some COVID-19 lockdown restrictions in its biggest city Auckland, and will instead look to live with the virus while controlling its spread. The Pacific nation was among just a handful of countries to bring COVID-19 cases down to zero …
Read More »Koreas restore hotline despite North’s missile tests
North and South Korea restored a stalled communication hotline after weeks of a hiatus in a small, fragile reconciliation step Monday, as the North pushes hard to win outside concessions with a mix of conciliatory gestures and missile tests. Liaison officials from the two Koreas exchanged messages over a cross-border …
Read More »US raises concern as China flies warplanes south of Taiwan
The Chinese military flew 16 warplanes over waters south of Taiwan on Sunday as the US expressed concern about what it called China’s “provocative military action” near the self-governing island that China claims. China sent 38 warplanes into the area on Friday and 39 aircraft on Saturday, the most in …
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