International

US attempts to violate Iran’s sovereignty over the issue of protests triggered by the death of a woman in police custody will not go unanswered, the foreign ministry said on Monday, as the biggest unrest since 2019 showed no signs of abating. Iran has been rocked by nationwide demonstrations sparked by the death of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, after she was …

WASHINGTON: Nasa has called off the scheduled Tuesday launch of its historic uncrewed mission to the Moon due to a tropical storm that is forecast to strengthen as it approaches Florida. After two previously canceled launch attempts, Nasa is weighing returning the Artemis 1 mission rocket to its assembly site under the threat of extreme weather. “Nasa is forgoing a …

TOKYO: A typhoon lashed central Japan on Saturday with torrential rain and fierce winds, killing two and leaving tens of thousands of households without power, the Kyodo news agency reported. Shizuoka city, southwest of the capital, Tokyo, was hit especially hard, seeing a record 417 mm (16.42 inches) of precipitation since the rain started on Thursday, the Japan Meteorological Agency …

JERUSALEM: A Palestinian driver was killed by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank on Saturday after what the army called an “attempted ramming attack” but Palestinians said was a traffic accident. The army said soldiers and police opened fire on a vehicle after the driver “attempted to run them over” during a patrol outside Nablus, in the northern West …

DAMASCUS: Thirteen more bodies were recovered on Saturday after a boat carrying migrants from Lebanon sank off the Syrian coast, raising the overall toll to 90, Syrian state television said, in one of the eastern Mediterranean’s deadliest such shipwrecks. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, called it a “heart-wrenching tragedy”. At least 14 of those rescued …

RIYADH: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived on Saturday in Saudi Arabia at the start of a two-day Gulf tour, in the hope of sealing new energy deals with the fossil fuel exporters. Scholz, accompanied by a sizeable industry delegation, was received at Jeddah airport on the Red Sea coast by Makkah region’s governor Prince Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud. Afterwards, …

KYIV: Russia announced on Saturday the replacement of its highest-ranking general in charge of logistics amid a mobilisation drive for the Ukraine military operation after Kyiv claimed to have recaptured some territory, while Kremlin-held regions of eastern and southern Ukraine voted for a second day on becoming part of Russia. “Army General Dmitry Bulgakov has been relieved of the post …

UNELECTED officials undermined democracy within the UK’s Labour Party, Al Jazeera has claimed in a new documentary, suggesting that “operatives secretly took control” of the party to thwart Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. The three-part series, titled The Labour Files: The Purge, is based on “the largest leak in British political history” comprising 500 gigabytes of documents, emails, video and audio files from the Labour …

WASHINGTON: The White House on Saturday blasted a court ruling in Arizona that imposes a near-complete ban on abortions in the southwestern US state as “catastrophic, dangerous and unacceptable.” On Friday, a judge in Arizona’s Pima County had ruled that the stricter ban — first imposed in 1864, before Arizona was a state — must be enforced. “If this decision …

Russia has sought to defend its seven-month old war at the United Nations, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying that regions of Ukraine where widely-derided referendums are being held would be under Russia’s “full protection” if annexed by Moscow. The referendums in four eastern Ukrainian regions, aimed at annexing territory Russia has taken by force since its invasion in February, entered their third …