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Iran poll shows people want change, says Obama
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama has urged Iran's newly elected president to prove to the world that the Islamic republic was not pursuing a nuclear weapon programme as the White House welcomed election of a moderate leader as a hopeful sign. "I think it says that the Iranian people want to move in a different direction," Obama said of the election results in Iran that saw a surprising ...
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Libya to hold trial of Gaddafi's son in August
LONDON - Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of deceased Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, will stand trial in August along with Gaddafi's last prime minister and a former intelligence director, the prosecutor's office has announced. The men will be tried for crimes against the Libyan people during the 2011 uprising that toppled the former regime. Notorious former spy chief Abdullah ...
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Group of Eight leaders stop short of calling for Assad ouster
ENNISKILLEN - The Group of Eight industrialised nations called for a swift end to the bloody civil war in Syria and urgent peace talks but stopped short of calling for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in its joint statement at the end of talks Tuesday. Despite the lack of consensus among the G8 on the fate of Assad, as well as the use of chemical weapons by his regime, Canadian ...
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Khurshid welcomes three months respite given to Indian expats in Saudi Arabia
External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Tuesday lauded the gesture of Saudi Arabian Government to grant three months respite to Indian immigrant workers overstaying or illegally residing in that country. "All those people who were there and did not have their complete paperwork or passports or those whose work visa had expired or those people who had received the visa for some work and ...
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More flights for repatriation of Indians from Saudi Arabia
Additional flights will operate between Saudi Arabia and India to help in the repatriation of illegal Indian expatriates who want to return to India from the Gulf nation, a top Indian diplomat has said. "The embassy has taken up the issue with the Indian authorities, and accordingly Air India, the national flag carrier, has expressed its readiness to operate flights," the Saudi Gazette Tuesday ...
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Saudi Arabia e-security centre to prevent hacking
Saudi Arabia has set up a national e-security centre to protect the country's e-system from hackers, a media report said Tuesday. Several hackers have been attacking government websites to steal data by planting undetected viruses for months, the centre's director, Abdulrahman Al Mueeqal, was quoted as saying by the Al Sharq Al Awsat newspaper. The centre will review the e-security system and ...
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Putin Obama agree to push for Syria talks in Geneva
Beijing, June 18 (Xinhua-ANI): Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday held here face-to-face talks on Syria on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Lough Erne, Britain. At a press conference after their two-hour talks, the two leaders admitted they had big differences on Syria, but they agreed to push for a summit in Geneva, Switzerland. "Our positions do not ...
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Afghan peace council members to talk with Taliban in Qatar Karzai
Kabul, June 18 (Xinhua-ANI): Some members of Afghan High Peace Council will travel to the Gulf state of Qatar to hold formal peace talks with the Taliban, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday. "Members of peace council will go to Qatar to initiate peace talks with the Taliban," Karzai told a joint press conference with the visiting NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Earlier ...
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Barbra Streisand criticizes womens discriminatory treatment in Israel
Barbra Streisand has spoken about the Jewish religious practices that separate men and women. The 71-year-old actress took aim at cases of ultra-Orthodox Jews targeting women while speaking at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Monday. The star, who herself was born in a Jewish family, said that it was distressing that women in Israel were forced to sit at the back of the bus, CBS News ...
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Emirates to fly 60 extra flights during Ramadan
The Emirates will operate nearly 60 extra flights to assist pilgrims travelling to the Saudi Arabia during the holy month of Ramadan. Additional 42 services will operate to Jeddah between July 5 and Aug 16. Extra 17 flights will operate to Medina from July16 - 31. The extra flights can be accessed by travellers holding a valid Umrah visa. Those wishing to travel to the KSA for reasons others ...
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Palestinian refugee camps in Syria now theatres of war - UN agency chief
17 June 2013 150 Warning that the centrifugal force of the Syria crisis continues to imperil the region, a senior United Nations agency official today said that more than half of the Palestinian refugee camps in Syria have become "theatres of war," where killings and kidnappings have become the norm. According to the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine ...
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Irans Rowhani Promises New Era
Iran's newly elected president is giving a glimpse into what he says may lie ahead for relations between Tehran and the rest of the world. Cleric Hassan Rowhani spoke at a news conference Monday, during which he promised to follow a path of moderation. President-elect Hassan Rowhani took to the podium to make clear his victory represents a new era, hinting at a new start with world ...
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MERS Coronavirus Kills Four More in Saudi Arabia
DUBAI Four more people have died and three more have fallen ill in Saudi Arabia from the new SARS-like coronavirus MERS-CoV, the Saudi Health Ministry said on Monday. The ministry said the four deaths were among previously registered cases. The new infections were in Eastern Province, in the capital Riyadh and in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Saudi Arabia has been the country ...
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Assad Warns Europe Will Pay the Price for Arming Rebels
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is warning Europe it will "pay the price" if it arms the rebels fighting to drive him from power. Assad told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper that giving the rebels weapons would "export" terrorists to Europe. He said fighters in Syria would gain combat experience and return to Europe with extremist ideologies. The Syrian president ...
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Syria Conflict Exposes Old Rivalries at G8 Summit
LONDON World leaders gathering at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland have been discussing how to end the Syrian conflict - and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been defending his support for Syrian leader Bashar al Assad, despite criticism from the his G8 counterparts. Intense gun battles rage in the heart of Damascus and Aleppo on the same day that G8 leaders gather in Northern ...
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Russia against allowing no-fly zone in Syria
Russia said Monday that it would not allow the imposition of a no-fly zone over the conflict-ravaged Syria and expressed surprise over Cairo severing ties with Damascus. "Russia sees no necessity of introducing such measures and considers them counter-productive," reported Xinhua citing Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich over the need to impose no-fly zone over ...
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G-8 summit ends with semi-agreement on Syrias future
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, answers questions from the media at a concluding press conference at the G8 venue of Lough Erne on June 18, 2013 in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. (Matt Cardy, Getty ...
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Defence Minister dodges question from McCain about Canadian military intervention in Syria
Minister of Defence Peter MacKay responds to a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 12, 2013. (Sean Kilpatrick/THE CANADIAN ...
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The Standing Man Of Turkey Act Of Quiet Protest Goes Viral
Over the weekend , police removed their tent city and re-opened Istanbul's Taksim Square to traffic, while maintaining a strong presence in the area. This might have seemed like the end of it for many protesters, until a lone man decided to take a stand, literally, against the government. For more than six hours Monday night, Erdem Gunduz stood motionless in Taksim Square, passively ...
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Vladimir Putin may allow Assad to go if power vacuum in Syria is avoided
Vladimir Putin with G8 leaders. The Russian leader has agreed to let President Assad of Syria go on certain conditions. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty ...
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Bahrain Delegation Meets Deputy Russian Foreign Minister
Moscow, June 18. (BNA) - A Bahrain parliamentary delegation led by Mp Abdulrahman Boumajeed today met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister and Russian President's Envoy to the Middle East Mikhail Bogdanov and discussed regional and international developments. Talks focused on steps undertaken to implement the recommendations set by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), the ...
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G8 wraps up with few concrete steps on war-torn Syria
Northern Ireland G8 leaders have called for a Syrian peace conference to be held as soon as possible, but deep divisions remain as Russia stands by its embattled Middle East ally.The tranquil summit setting at Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, belied the meeting's bitter divide over the Syrian issue, which two days of talks have done little to resolve.The war in the country overshadowed a ...
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Syrian tensions spillover into Lebanon as Sunni and Shia militias clash
It was one of the most serious outbreaks of violence in Sidon, a mostly Sunni city whose population largely sympathises with the Sunni-led insurgency ...
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Cameron says morning swim helped with G8 Syria talks
British Prime Minister David Cameron speaks during a press conference at the end of the G8 summit at Lough Erne resort, Northern Ireland, June 18, 2013. A dip in the icy waters of a Northern Irish lake proved the ideal tonic before a day of tough talks with G8 leaders on tax evasion and the Syria crisis, Cameron said on ...
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Iran Hassan Rohani the pragmatic president
Lawyer, cleric, academic. Iran’s new president Hassan Rohani was playing the role of the diplomat as he met his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Tuesday. The pair discussed the economic and political problems the country faces, especially after years of sanctions imposed by the West over Iran’s nuclear stance. ';The next government aims to make use of experiences ...
Iran Focus
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Iran will have men in space within ten years
Iran will have astronauts in space within the next ten years, according to government officials who recently revealed to Iran news media the Iranian Space Agency’s long-term space objectives.
Iran has pursued an ambitious space program in recent years, entering the so-called ‘Asian Space Race’ and launching the country’s first rocket in 2004, followed in 2009 by the launch of an entirely domestically-built satellite, thereby becoming the 9th country in the world to have achieved orbital-launch capability. Read more
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