Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters

China has ordered its airlines not to take any further deliveries of Boeing jets in response to the U.S. decision to impose 145% tariffs on Chinese goods, Bloomberg News said on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Beijing has also asked that Chinese carriers halt any purchases of aircraft-related equipment and parts from U.S. companies, the Bloomberg report said. The Chinese government is also considering ways to provide assistance to airlines that lease Boeing jets and are facing higher costs, the people told Bloomberg News.

Four Russian journalists were sentenced by a Moscow court to 5-1/2 years each in prison on Tuesday after being found guilty of working for the banned organisation of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russian news outlets said. Antonina Favorskaya, Sergei Karelin, Konstantin Gabov and Artem Kriger have been on trial behind closed doors since October on charges, which they deny, of belonging to an extremist group.

A decade of heartbreak ended in a single stroke. Rory McIlroy captured the elusive Masters title – and the career Grand Slam – by birdieing the first hole of a sudden-death playoff against Justin Rose on Sunday, punctuating a dramatic final round at Augusta National with a fist-pumping, tearful exhale of long-buried frustration. Moments earlier, it looked like deja vu. McIlroy missed a five-foot par putt on the 18th in regulation, surrendering his lead and letting Rose back into the mix. But the Northern Irishman reset, returned to the 18th, and delivered a dagger – sticking his approach to within…

A decade of heartbreak ended in a single stroke. Rory McIlroy captured the elusive Masters title – and the career Grand Slam – by birdieing the first hole of a sudden-death playoff against Justin Rose on Sunday, punctuating a dramatic final round at Augusta National with a fist-pumping, tearful exhale of long-buried frustration. Moments earlier, it looked like deja vu. McIlroy missed a five-foot par putt on the 18th in regulation, surrendering his lead and letting Rose back into the mix. But the Northern Irishman reset, returned to the 18th, and delivered a dagger – sticking his approach to within…

Saudi Arabia plans to pay off Syria’s debts to the World Bank, three people familiar with the matter said, paving the way for the approval of millions of dollars in grants for reconstruction and to support the country’s paralysed public sector. The plans, which have not been previously reported, would be the first known instance of Saudi Arabia providing financing for Syria since anti-Baath regime groups toppled former leader Bashar al-Assad last year. It may also be a sign that crucial Gulf Arab support for Syria is beginning to materialize after previous plans, including an initiative by Doha to fund…

Pop star Katy Perry and five other women launched into space on a Blue Origin rocket and successfully returned to earth on Monday, marking the first all-female spaceflight in more than 60 years. The crew lifted off on a New Shepard rocket from West Texas at 9:31 a.m. ET (1331 GMT) and traveled to the edge of space, where they experienced a brief period of weightlessness before returning to earth in a flight lasting around 11 minutes, according to a live broadcast by Blue Origin, the space company founded by billionaire Jeff Bezos. The six-person crew also included Bezos’ fiancée…

Türkiye is set to begin restoration and reinforcement work on the dome of the Hagia Sophia, in one of the biggest repair projects carried out on the 1,486-year-old structure, experts said on Monday. Hagia Sophia was the largest cathedral in the world for 900 years until its capture by Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in 1453, after which it was one of Islam’s most exalted mosques for nearly 500 years. The building was converted to a museum by the secular Kemalist government more than 70 years ago but turned back into a mosque by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2020.…

President Donald Trump said on Monday that Iran must abandon any drive for a nuclear weapon or face harsh consequences that could include a military strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. “Of course it does,” Trump said when asked if a potential response could include strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that China and Vietnam were meeting to figure out how to harm the United States, but that he didn’t blame them for such discussions. “I don’t blame China; I don’t blame Vietnam,” Trump told reporters in the White House’s Oval Office. “I see they’re meeting today… that’s a lovely meeting. Meeting like, trying to figure out, ‘how do we screw the United States of America’.”

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Monday she was concerned that President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other policies were eroding allies’ trust in U.S. commitments, and that some investors were starting to shun U.S. assets. Yellen told CNBC television that last week’s surge in yields on U.S. Treasury debt, which move inversely to prices, was troublesome given their traditional safe-haven status and called into question “the safety of what is the bedrock of the global financial system, namely U.S. Treasuries.” “I don’t think we’re seeing dysfunction in the sense of liquidity completely drying up in the markets, but…