Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that the Syrian transitional authority may be weeks away from potential collapse and full-scale civil war, defending U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to lift Syria sanctions and to engage with the Damascus government. “It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday “it would be great” for Russia and Ukraine to hold ceasefire talks at the Vatican, saying it would add extra significance to the proceedings. Trump, describing his phone call earlier with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he told him, “When are we going to end this, Vladimir?” Trump says he was surprised that Biden’s cancer diagnosis was not revealed sooner Trump told reporters on Monday he was surprised the public was not notified sooner about former President Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis. Biden disclosed on Sunday he was diagnosed with prostate cancer with…
Tottenham Hotspur have endured their worst domestic campaign in nearly half a century, but redemption awaits on Wednesday at Bilbao’s San Mames Stadium. A Europa League triumph over Manchester United would erase months of misery. Under Ange Postecoglou, Spurs were among the early favourites – alongside United – after opening their European campaign with a commanding 3-0 win over FK Qarabag in September. Despite a dismal Premier League run that saw the two sides rack up a combined 39 losses, both clubs have clawed their way to the final. With one match remaining, Tottenham sit 17th in the league with…
An Indian climber and another from Romania died on Nepal’s Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth tallest peak, hiking officials said on Monday, taking the season’s death toll to at least eight. Rakesh Kumar, 39, from India, died on Sunday while descending from the 8,516 m (27,940 ft) mountain’s summit, said Mohan Lamsal of Makalu Adventure, the Nepali company that organised his climb. “He was coming down from the 8,000 metre (26,246 ft) high fourth camp when he suddenly collapsed,” Lamsal told Reuters. “Efforts to revive him by his Sherpa guide failed.” Romania’s Barna Zsolt Vago, 48, died the same day…
Lithuania’s foreign ministry said on Monday it has filed a case against Belarus at the International Court of Justice, accusing its neighbour of orchestrating a migrant crisis.
Iran’s foreign ministry summoned the British charge d’affaires in Tehran, state media reported on Monday, over the arrest of Iranian nationals and what it said were “false claims” levelled by Britain against the Islamic Republic. Earlier this month, British police arrested 7 Iranian nationals in two separate operations, with three men charged last week with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service, in this case Iran. The three men were remanded in custody and will appear at a preliminary judicial hearing on June 6, while the other four men have been released from custody but still face…
Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday rejected a proposal to invite Taiwan to its annual assembly in Geneva after China voiced opposition. Belize and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines spoke on behalf of a group of countries who brought a proposal to include Taiwan as an observer to this year’s meeting – with Saint Vincent describing Taiwan’s exclusion as ‘unfair and self-defeating’. But China and Pakistan opposed the motion and the assembly accepted its exclusion. “The proposal openly challenges the authority of the U.N. and the post-war international order,” said China’s Ambassador Chen Xu, repeating opposition…
Nvidia said on Monday it plans to sell a technology to others that will tie chips together in order to speed up the chip-to-chip communication needed to build and deploy artificial intelligence tools. Nvidia launched a new version of its NVLink tech called NVLink Fusion on Monday that it will sell to other chip designers to help build powerful custom AI systems with multiple chips linked together. Marvell Technology and MediaTek plan to adopt the NVLink tech called Fusion for their custom chip efforts. Nvidia developed NVLink years ago, and it’s used to exchange massive amounts of data between various…
U.S. President Donald Trump said his call with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Monday went very well and that Moscow and Kyiv would immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire and end to the war. Under pressure from Trump, delegates from the warring countries met last week in Istanbul for the first time since 2022, though they failed to agree to a truce. Kyiv says it is ready for a ceasefire now; Moscow says conditions must be met first. “Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately,” Trump said in a Truth Social post following his call with Putin, which lasted…
The founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, said he refused a request by the head of France’s intelligence service to ban Romanian conservative voices ahead of the country’s elections. Romania’s centrist Bucharest mayor, Nicusor Dan, won the presidential election on Sunday in a shock upset over a hard-right, nationalist rival who had pledged to adopt a path inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump’s politics. “This spring at the Salon des Batailles in the Hôtel de Crillon, Nicolas Lerner, head of French intelligence, asked me to ban conservative voices in Romania ahead of elections. I refused,” Durov wrote on…