Author: Steven Sahiounie

Reuters news agency has reported that talks are under way in Paris in what appears to be the most serious push in weeks to halt the fighting in Gaza. The news agency cites a source briefed on the talks who said that discussion had started with Israel’s head of Mossad intelligence service meeting separately with each negotiating party – Qatar, Egypt and the US – on Friday. Two Egyptian security sources earlier confirmed to Reuters that Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel would travel to Paris on Friday for the talks with the Israelis, after wrapping up talks with Hamas leader…

Russia’s permanent envoy to the United Nations rejected accusations that Russia is occupying Ukrainian territory, stressing that they are “Russian regions” after the regions in question voted in favor of joining the federation. A UN General Assembly session on the war marking its second year saw Kiev and its Western allies condemning Russia’s “occupation” of Ukrainian lands. Addressing the attendees, Vassily Nebenzia said: “In reality, there is no such thing as temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. They are Russian regions.” Nebenzia added that Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye became part of…

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has denounced the US for “brazenly vetoing” a UN Security Council resolution to stop the ongoing Israeli genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip. The third US veto of a Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza revealed “the lies of Western civilization’s claims about human rights and the hypocrisy of Westerners in the Gaza issue”, the Leader said Saturday. “The Westerners, who make noise and uproar for the execution of a criminal, have turned a blind eye to the killing of 30,000 innocent people in Gaza, and the US has brazenly…

The United States and the United Kingdom have launched a string of airstrikes against targets in Yemen’s strategic western province of Hudaydah in response to continued attacks by Yemeni Armed Forces against Israeli-affiliated commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Yemen’s official Saba news agency, citing a security source speaking on condition of anonymity, reported that two airstrikes hit al-Kuwaizi area in the al-Durayhimi district, Hudaydah late on Friday. No further details about any casualties were immediately available. The development came hours after US and British forces conducted three strikes against positions in the Port of Ras Isa. Diana Shipping’s vessels avoiding Suez…

NATO should cease its “saber-rattling” and start promoting global peace, Chinese envoy Zhang Jun has said at a UN Security Council meeting dedicated to the second anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine. The struggle between Moscow and Kiev, which started on February 24, 2022, is a “tragedy that could have been avoided,” Zhang stressed in his address on Friday. ”The situation Europe is facing today is closely related to the repeated eastward expansion of NATO since the end of the Cold War,” he said. Russia singled out preventing Ukraine from joining NATO as one of the main goals of its military operation in the…

Russian President Vladimir Putin has not yet discussed statements about the suspension of Yerevan’s membership in the CSTO with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan – so far there are no plans for such contacts, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS. “At the moment there are no contacts and there have not been any. However, within the framework of working contacts of course we will to find out what was meant. We will continue our dialogue with Yerevan,” he said. Peskov told Zvezda TV channel earlier that Yerevan has not sent official notifications regarding the freeze of membership in the…

Vasily Nebenzya said that he “won’t listen to the European representatives’ ritual incantations” Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya has said that he refuses to listen to European representatives’ speeches at the UN Security Council meeting on Ukraine. “I would like to warn in advance that I won’t listen to the European representatives’ ritual incantations. Let them show their eloquence to one another, polluting the broadcast with their hypocritical presentations,” he said. “I would like to remind you that none of the European Union counties and the West in general has ever come up with an initiative of…

Brazilian President Lula da Silva has once again affirmed that Israel is committing a “genocide” against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. Speaking at an event in Rio de Janeiro yesterday, President da Silva stated, “What Israel is doing is not a war, it’s genocide because they are killing women and children.” He added, “This is genocide. Thousands of dead children, thousands missing. It’s not soldiers who are dying, but women and children in hospitals. If this is not genocide, I don’t know what genocide is!” President Lula da Silva has consistently held this position, emphasizing the term “genocide.” He…

Dozens of civilians sustained various injuries this morning in an Israeli airstrike that targeted al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip. Medical sources reported that Israeli fighter jets bombed a house in Al-Maghazi camp, causing multiple causalities among civilians, the majority of whom were children and women. Israeli warplanes further carried out a series of airstrikes targeting several areas west of the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The number of civilians killed since the start of Israel’s aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7 has surged to 29,514. In addition, at least 69,616 people…

Iran has denounced Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state, saying it disproves the occupying regime’s previous claims about peace with Palestinians and the resolution of the decades-long conflict. The reaction came after the Israeli Knesset (parliament) and prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right Israeli cabinet reiterated opposition to an independent Palestinian state. The opposition, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani wrote on X Friday, “once again exposed the ugly face as well as warmongering and occupying nature of the regime”. “The regime’s fraudulent approach calls into question unrewarding past agreements as well as bogus claims for peace, which Zionist authorities had been promoting through scam and…