Author: Steven Sahiounie

Taiwan’s President will make a transit stop in the US where she is expected to meet with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on her way back from a trip to Latin America. China warned the US on Wednesday that a meeting between US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen during the latter’s transit visit to the United States next month will be viewed as a “provocation” that will require retaliatory measures from Beijing. Tsai is set to start a trip to Guatemala and Belize on Wednesday, during which she will make a transit stop in New York…

According to the Kazakh constitution, the government resigns when a new lower house of parliament is elected. The Kazakh presidential press service announced in a statement that the government of Kazakhstan, led by Alikhan Smailov, has resigned in connection with the election of a new composition of the lower house of the republic’s parliament. According to the Kazakh constitution, the government resigns when a new lower house of parliament is elected. On March 19, Kazakhstan voted in snap parliamentary elections that saw new faces on the ballot. The Central Election Commission confirmed that most seats – 62 out of 98 – were…

CEO Jamie Dimon faces judicial examination over the financial giant’s links to convicted sex offender Jamie Dimon, the longtime CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase, faces judicial examination in two civil lawsuits that claim the investment bank profited from links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, several media outlets reported on Tuesday, citing sources. The lawsuits were brought against the Wall Street bank by an alleged Epstein victim and against the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned a home. Epstein, who died in a prison cell in 2021 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, had been a client at JPMorgan…

Israeli settlers Wednesday attacked homes of Palestinian shepherds in the village of Barriyat Kissan, to the east of the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, injuring an elderly Palestinian and his son. Ahmad Ghazal, an activist, told WAFA that a number of fanatic settlers from the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Amos, assaulted shepherds in their homes in the aforementioned area and proceeded to ransack their houses. As a result, Ali Ebeyyat, 70, and his son Jihad, in his 30s, were injured and moved to a hospital for treatment. Israeli settlers have recently escalated their attacks and violations against Palestinian…

The Arab countries do not adhere to a single point of view on the normalization of relations with the leadership of Syria, and there are no noticeable changes around the situation with Damascus, Qatari Foreign Minister spokesman Majed bin Mohammed Al Ansari said on Tuesday. “There is no Arab consensus on the normalization of relations with the Syrian regime at the present time, there are no signs of any noticeable development of the situation in the Syrian arena,” Al Ansari told Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. In addition, there are no signs of the restoration of diplomatic relations between Doha and Damascus,…

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, during an official visit to Moscow, will discuss with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday a number of bilateral and international issues, including the North-South transport corridor, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the situation in Syria. The top diplomats of Iran and Russia will discuss the resumption of the JCPOA. “One of the issues to be raised during our tomorrow discussions with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov will be the JCPOA [the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program],” Iranian Foreign Minister said in his Telegram account, upon arriving in Moscow.…

The ASEAN economic union reportedly wants to protect transactions from “possible geopolitical repercussions” The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is set to discuss dropping the US dollar, euro, yen and pound sterling from transactions and moving to settlements in local currencies, according to the news magazine Tempo. An official meeting of ASEAN finance ministers and central bank governors kicked off on Tuesday in Indonesia. A regional grouping that aims to promote economic and security cooperation among its members, ASEAN includes Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. “Efforts to reduce dependence on major currencies…

It is reported that Vladimir Zelensky has already extended an invitation to Xi Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said he was ready to receive a visit from Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “We are ready to see him here,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press published on Wednesday. “I want to speak with him. <…> But during all this year, more than one year, I didn’t have [contact with Xi].” According to the AP, Zelensky has already extended an invitation to Xi. Commenting on the report at a news briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said…

“Ukraine is far from being the sole country that has become a proving ground for testing biological weapons,” Nikolay Patrushev stressed There is strong evidence that the United States is engaged in biological activity in Ukraine, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said on Wednesday. “There is irrefutable evidence that Washington conducts large-scale biological activity on Ukrainian territory and the American elites are involved in these processes,” Patrushev said at a meeting of security chiefs from member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As the Russian security chief pointed out, “in the areas of Ternopol, Odessa, Kharkov and Nikolayev,…

Poland and Romania want local farmers to be safeguarded against a flood of cheap imports Poland and Romania have appealed to the European Commission to set an export tracing mechanism for Ukrainian grain, the countries’ respective prime ministers, Mateusz Morawiecki and Nicolae Ciuca, revealed at a business conference in Bucharest on Tuesday. According to the senior officials, Ukraine has been shipping much of its grain through neighboring Eastern European countries after its Black Sea ports were blocked amid Russia’s military operation. Many of these shipments are much cheaper than local produce, and due to various factors they have ended up…