Author: Daily Sabah With DPA

During his first visit to Kiev, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented a draft agreement to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky regarding the mining of rare raw materials in the country by US investors. “We will do everything to ensure that our teams can get down to work, agree on something very quickly and sign the document,” Zelensky said after the meeting. After taking office on January 20, US President Donald Trump had declared that he wanted his country’s military aid to Kiev to be paid for with raw materials. “We are talking about the joint development of deposits,” Zelensky emphasized.…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan firmly rejects US plans to relocate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and instead calls on Israel to rebuild the extensively destroyed coastal area. At a conference in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, Erdoğan stated, “From our perspective, the proposals aiming to displace the Palestinians from the land they have lived on for thousands of years are not to be taken seriously.” He added, “No one has the power to inflict a second Nakba on the Palestinian people, nor will they ever have.” The term Nakba, from the Arabic for catastrophe, refers to the flight and…

Protests against Germany’s far-right drew 200,000 people in the southern city of Munich on Saturday, police said. Organizers put the number of demonstrators in the Bavarian capital at some 320,000. Protesters flocked to the Theresienwiese, where the world-famous Oktoberfest beer festival is held every autumn, to march for “diversity, human dignity, cohesion and democracy.” Attendees held banners denouncing racism and fascism, while the peaceful demonstration also received support from civil society organizations ranging from the Munich Film Festival to church and charity organizations and the Bayern Munich football club. Politicians from Bavaria’s centre-right Christian Social Union (CSU) stayed away, with…

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday said his conservative rival Friedrich Merz’s promises to rule out cooperation with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) can “no longer be trusted,” just two weeks before Germany heads to the polls. At a campaign stop in the eastern city of Potsdam, Scholz told dpa that Merz had “broken his word” on the question of working with the far right, after the centre-right CDU/CSU bloc passed a motion in parliament last week with votes from the AfD. Merz is seen as the favourite to replace Scholz as chancellor after the vote on February 23,…

US President Donald Trump on Friday said that he would announce further “reciprocal” tariffs next week. Asked about tariffs on products from Japan as he met Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House, Trump answered in far-reaching terms, speaking of “reciprocal trade, so that we’re treated evenly with other countries. We don’t want any more, any less.” Trump spoke of an announcement on Monday or Tuesday. “I think that’s the only fair way to do it that way nobody’s hurt,” Trump said. “They charge us, we charge them. It’s the same thing, and I seem to be going in…

Employees of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) will be placed on leave from Friday night, the agency said. All “direct-hire personnel” working anywhere in the world for the agency will be put on “administrative leave,” with the exception of employees in critical positions, a statement on USAID’s website said. Those affected by the exemptions will be informed one day in advance, the agency, which is under the acting leadership of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said. President Donald Trump already froze the agency’s funds in January pending an internal review, impacting a vast array of initiatives around…

Ukraine has lost 45,100 soldiers on the battlefield since Russia’s all-out invasion began nearly three years ago, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said. In an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan published on YouTube late on Tuesday, Zelensky put the number of injured soldiers at 390,000. The figures cannot be independently confirmed. While both Ukraine and Russia report enemy losses daily, they rarely disclose their own casualty numbers. It is generally accepted that both sides play down their own losses and exaggerate those of the enemy. Western intelligence services estimate up to 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers and more than twice as many…

Argentina will leave the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic, a spokesman for right-wing populist President Javier Milei said on Wednesday. The decision comes two weeks after President Donald Trump announced, on the first day of his second term, that the United States would leave the UN health body. “President Javier Milei has instructed Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein to withdraw Argentina from the WHO,” said government spokesman Manuel Adorni at a press conference. Like Trump, Milei’s spokesman said the Argentinian government has profound disagreements with the WHO regarding the response to the coronavirus pandemic.…

Russia has described the European Union’s efforts to increase defence spending as a short-sighted and destructive policy. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that militarism is rising in the EU, leading to investments in armaments being increased under the pretext of a threat from Russia. “It is clear that further increases in spending will have very, very negative effects and will lead to a further deterioration of the economic situation in Europe, which will affect every European,” he said. The EU Commission estimates that additional defence investments of around €500 billion (about $513 billion) will be needed over the…

The Russian foreign minister on Tuesday accused Western nations of attempting to push Russia, China, and Iran into secondary roles in Syria, warning that such efforts are not driven by good intentions. Speaking at the 14th Middle East Conference of the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow, Sergey Lavrov said these moves reflect the West’s broader goal of diminishing its geopolitical competitors. “Attempts to remove Russia, China, and Iran from the process of externally supporting a Syrian settlement are hardly motivated by goodwill. Instead, they expose the West’s intention to push its competitors into secondary positions,” he said. Lavrov also accused…