Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters

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…

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…

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…

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…

Britain will not impose retaliatory trade tariffs in response to U.S. duties on all steel and aluminium imports which are due to come into force on Wednesday, a British government official said on Tuesday. While the European Union plans to hit back against the 25% US tariffs on imports of the metals, the official – who asked not to be identified – said Britain would continue to engage with the U.S. in an attempt to secure an exemption. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesman said on Monday that the UK and the US had a strong economic relationship which was…

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.

The cargo ship involved in Monday’s collision with a jet fuel tanker off England’s northeast coast is still alight, Britain’s coastguard said on Tuesday. “The Solong (cargo ship) is still alight and the fire on board the Stena Immaculate has greatly diminished,” the coastguard said in a statement. “Safety vessels and other vessels with firefighting capabilities are still on scene with more arriving today.”

European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, in simultaneous statements on X, said they welcomed the news from Jeddah on the U.S.-Ukraine talks, including the proposal for a ceasefire agreement. “This is a positive development that can be a step towards a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine. The ball is now in Russia’s court,” they said on Tuesday. They added that the EU is ready to play its full part, together with its partners, in the upcoming peace negotiations.

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…

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.