Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters

Russia wants to see a united and friendly Syria because instability there could affect the entire region, the Kremlin said on Tuesday. “This is too explosive a region and, of course… the destabilisation or disintegration of one of the countries in the region can have disastrous consequences for the region as a whole. Therefore, we want to see Syria united, prosperous, developing, predictable and friendly,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. He said Russia was in contact with other countries about the situation in Syria after a flare-up of violence there in the past week.

Only seven countries met World Health Organization (WHO) air quality standards last year, data showed on Tuesday, as researchers warned that the war on smog would only get harder after the United States shut down its global monitoring efforts. Chad and Bangladesh were the world’s most polluted countries in 2024, with average smog levels more than 15 times higher than WHO guidelines, according to figures compiled by Swiss air quality monitoring firm IQAir. Only Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Estonia and Iceland made the grade, IQAir said. Significant data gaps, especially in Asia and Africa, cloud the worldwide…

Ukraine has carried out a drone attack on Moscow before a visit of Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) Secretary General to the Russian capital on Tuesday, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. “This is not the first time that a visit to Moscow by a high-ranking foreign delegation has been accompanied by an attack by Ukrainian armed forces drones,” Zakharova wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging app. “Overnight, too, the Kyiv regime has sent drones into the capital when the OSCE Secretary General is visiting it.” The OSCE is the world’s largest regional security…

Armed Israeli settlers stole hundreds of sheep from a Bedouin community in the Jordan Valley, local residents say, in one of the largest recent incidents in which Bedouins in the area have reported being attacked and harrassed. Such attacks in the area have increased since the Gaza war began but witnesses said the scale of Friday’s incident near Ein al-Auja, north of the city of Jericho in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, went far beyond anything witnessed previously. “This was the biggest one there has been,” said Hani Zayed, a resident of the community, who said he lost 70 sheep in…

Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and taken into custody on Tuesday in Manila on an International Criminal Court warrant for the “war on drugs” that defined his term in office and which killed thousands of Filipinos. Here are some facts about the drug war during Duterte’s presidency from 2016 to 2022: CAMPAIGN VOWS TO ‘KILL’ As longtime mayor of the southern Philippine city of Davao, Rodrigo Duterte was known as “the punisher” for his harsh policies. His profanity-packed speeches and death threats to drug gangs were a feature of his successful campaign for the presidency in 2016. Among…

The Kremlin said on Monday that long-standing Western accusations that Russia commits sabotage in the U.S. and Europe are “empty and ephemeral” and have not been proven. It made the comments when asked to comment on reports that the U.S. had suspended certain measures to counter such alleged Russian sabotage campaigns. “No confirmation of the existence of sabotage campaigns has been established even in the course of special proceedings that have been attempted in the United States and in European capitals,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Peskov said that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was merely trying to…

Israel’s suspension of goods entering Gaza has begun to take a toll on the Palestinian enclave, with some bakeries closing and officials warning of growing risks to the environment including possible discharges of raw sewage into the sea. The suspension, intended to pressure resistance group Hamas in ceasefire talks, applies to food, medicine and fuel imports. Hamas describes the measure as “collective punishment” and insists it will not be pushed into making concessions at the discussions. The U.N. Palestinian refugees agency UNRWA said the decision to halt humanitarian aid threatens the lives of civilians exhausted by 17 months of “brutal”…

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said on Monday that the alliance fully supports the territorial integrity of Bosnia and urged political leaders to resolve tensions fuelled after the state court sentenced to jail the president of Bosnian Serb region. “We will not allow hard-won peace to be jeopardised,” Rutte told reporters after meeting the country’s tripartite presidency. “This is not 1992 and we will not allow a security vacuum to emerge,” Rutte underlined while referring to the year Bosnia’s bloody inter-ethnic war began.

Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa said mass killings of members of ousted regime leader Bashar al-Assad’s minority sect were a threat to his mission to unite the country, and promised to punish those responsible, including his own allies if necessary. In his first interview to a global news agency, held after hundreds died in four days of clashes between Alawite Muslims and Syria’s new Sunni Muslim authorities, Sharaa blamed pro-Assad groups backed by foreigners for triggering the bloodshed but acknowledged that revenge killings had followed. “Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” he…

Ukraine’s air defences shot down 73 of 119 drones launched by Russia in an overnight attack on Sunday, the air force said. It said that 37 drones were “lost”, in reference to the military’s use of electronic warfare to redirect them. The military said damage was recorded in six Ukrainian regions but provided no immediate details.