Author: AFP
Anti-regime fighters who have taken city after city in a lightning offensive in Syria aim to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader said in an interview published on Friday. After cutting a swathe through government-held territory in northern and central Syria, the anti-regime forces were at the gates of the country’s third largest city Homs, a war monitor said. In a little over a week, the offensive has seen Assad’s forces ousted from the major cities of Aleppo and Hama for the first time since the civil war began in 2011. Should the opposition forces capture Homs,…
A Russian strike on Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region has killed at least nine people, the local governor said Friday. Zaporizhzhia governor Ivan Fedorov said a Russian attack had set a car garage and service station on fire, posting images of a fire blazing with debris strewn across the street. “Nine dead and six wounded,” he said in a post on Telegram, updating an earlier toll of seven fatalities. “Among the wounded are two children, aged four and 11,” he added. In a previous message he had called Russia a “terrorist state”. Some nearby communities had problems with electricity supplies after…
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his South Korean counterpart Friday that Washington was confident in its ally’s “democratic resilience”, in their first conversation since President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempt to impose martial law. Blinken “spoke with Foreign Minister (Cho Tae-yul) following deeply concerning developments in (South Korea). He welcomed the lifting of martial law, expressed confidence in the country’s democratic resilience, and reaffirmed the United States’ ironclad commitment to our Alliance,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said on social media platform X. A separate statement issued by the State Department said Blinken told his opposite number that he…
President Joe Biden is considering preemptive pardons for several prominent names facing possible retribution from the incoming Trump administration, US media has reported. Among those being considered for the historic pardons are Anthony Fauci, the former White House special advisor on Covid-19, and former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney, who has become a fierce critic of Donald Trump. The president-elect, who has never acknowledged his defeat in the 2020 elections, has made no secret of his desire to exact vengeance against critics and those he claims stole the election from him. Biden has discussed with advisors the possibility of using his…
TikTok edged closer to being banned in the United States after it lost an appeal on Friday against a law requiring the video-sharing app to divest from its Chinese parent company by January 19. The potential ban could strain US-China relations just as president-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office on January 20. TikTok said it would now appeal to the Supreme Court, which could choose to take up the case or let the DC circuit court’s decision stand. “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do…
The ceremony for the grand reopening of France’s Notre Dame cathedral will be held entirely indoors due to an inclement weather forecast, the Elysee Palace and Paris diocese said Friday. Saturday’s reopening, which comes five years after the fire that devastated the famed Paris landmark, was moved inside after weather service Meteo France forecast wind gusts of up to 80 kilometres (50 miles) per hour, “obliging us to reorganise the arrangements”, said President Emmanuel Macron’s office and the local diocese in a joint statement. A long list of world leaders, royalty and celebrities are due to attend the gala event.…
Ukrainian drones struck the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky on Friday, killing three people and seriously wounding three others, the region’s Moscow-appointed governor said. Images shared by Vladimir Saldo, the Russian-installed governor of Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, showed what appeared to be bodies lying on a street and outside a building, covered with blankets. “This morning, Alyoshki was subjected to an inhumane kamikaze drone attack,” Saldo said, using the Russian spelling of the town’s name. He said the drones targeted an aid distribution point in the town, accusing Kyiv of directing the attack “exclusively at the civilian population”. “As a result……
Kyiv on Thursday sanctioned the Georgian prime minister and billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, widely seen as the country’s de facto leader, amid mass pro-EU protests in the Black Sea nation, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said. “These are sanctions against the part of the government in Georgia that is handing Georgia over to Putin,” Zelensky said in a video message on Telegram.
NATO chief Mark Rutte said Wednesday that Russia was giving support to North Korea’s missile and nuclear programmes in exchange for Pyongyang sending troops to use in the war with Ukraine. “In return for troops and weapons, Russia is providing North Korea with support for its missile and nuclear programmes,” Rutte told journalists after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.
More than 30,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to severe flooding in southern Thailand, where the death toll climbed to 29, officials said Wednesday. Days more heavy rain are forecast in the area, which has already been battered by torrential floodwaters, with more than 155,000 households currently affected, according to the Thai government’s public relations department. Five southern provinces have been hit — — Pattani, Narathiwat, Songkhla, Nakhon Si Thammarat and Phatthalung — forcing more than 33,000 people to leave their homes, the spokesperson for Thailand’s ministry of public health said in a statement. The death…