Author: Zaizeraa

The president of Iran was on Sunday night feared dead after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in a mountainous region. The lives of Ebrahim Raisi and Hossein Amirabdollahian, his foreign minister, were “at risk”, an Iranian official said during a large search and rescue mission. Ahmad Vahidi, the Iranian interior minister, blamed the crash, which came just a month after Tehran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack against Israel, on poor weather conditions. State media described the incident as an “accident”. The chief of staff of the Iranian military ordered the entire army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)…

Brussels (12/03 – 55.56) Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said that the dissolution of human rights NGOs signals a deteriorating environment for civil society and human rights defence in Tajikistan. She reiterated that Tajikistan must reconsider its attitudes towards civil society and view human rights defenders as allies instead of enemies. Earlier in November 2023, Tajikistan Minister of Justice announced that 700 NGOs in the country had been liquidated over an 18-month period. “Human rights defenders working on so-called sensitive issues, including freedom from torture, the right to housing and compensation for requisitioned land, minority rights, freedom of belief and good governance, political rights, and…

Dubai (27/2) Tajikistan’s existential project to build the colossal 335-meter-high Roghun hydropower dam is proceeding apace, but costs are spiralling, and to a level that is making it hard to see where the government is going to find the funds needed to finish the work. To complicate matters for Dushanbe, this is happening against the backdrop of calls from environmental watchdogs for international development lenders to pause the allocation of any future funds to Tajikistan pending a fresh assessment of the project. The extent of the budget overshoot is striking In a press conference on February 16, Finance Minister Faiziddin…

Key Moment Third-quarter woes appear to be a thing of the past for the Boston Celtics, as they’ve emerged from the All-Star break with two straight wins, both of which were fueled by big runs right after halftime. On Thursday night a 37-21 third-quarter advantage sparked a 129-112 win in Chicago. Then on Saturday night, a 33-13 third-quarter stretch served as the climax for a 116-102 victory in New York. Now, let’s dive into the latter performance that just took place at Madison Square Garden. It was a close game for most of the first half and it was all…

WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD, Feb 3 (Reuters) – The United States launched airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against more than 85 targets linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and militias it backs, reportedly killing nearly 40 people, in retaliation for a deadly attack on U.S. troops. The strikes, which included the use of long-range B-1 bombers flown from the United States, were the first in response to the attack last weekend in Jordan by Iran-backed militants, and more U.S. military operations are expected in the coming days. The strikes intensified a conflict that has spread into the region since war erupted between Israel and Hamas after the militant…

Israeli war planes and artillery bombarded Khan Younis in the south of the Gaza Strip on Saturday, hitting mosques and homes and close to a hospital, after the collapse of a truce in the nearly two-month-old war between Israel and Hamas militantsThe Gaza health ministry said at least 193 Palestinians had been killed and 650 wounded since the truce ended on Friday morning – adding to the more than 15,000 Palestinian dead since the start of the war.The head of International Red Cross said the renewed fighting was intense.“It’s a new layer of disruption coming on top of massive, unparalleled destruction of…

The protection of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a “moral responsibility and strategic imperative”, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin warned Israel. “We will continue to press Israel to protect civilians and to ensure the robust flow of humanitarian aid. First and foremost, that’s the right thing to do. But it’s also good strategy,” Austin told reporters. Austin compared Israel’s fight against Hamas with the US fight against terrorist organization ISIS in Iraq. He said: “I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS. Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban…

Frankfurt (18/12 – 14) That there are remarkable advantages in being ignored is not generally recognized. Central Asian countries, historically under the thumb of Moscow, all through the 70+ years of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were more or less cut off from the outside world. There was little trade or other exchange. The USSR was in fact a grab-bag of ethnicities, religions and languages, controlled with an iron fist by Stalin and afterwards with unbroken dominance through subsequent regimes. Under Soviet management, Central Asia had stayed poor and ignored; it had not developed any hydrocarbon resources to lure…

The head of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah said on Saturday that his armed group had used new types of weapons and struck new targets in Israel in recent days and pledged that the front in the south against its sworn enemy would remain active. It was Hassan Nasrallah’s second speech since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October. In his first address earlier this month he said there was a possibility of fighting on the Lebanese front turning into a full-fledged war. Nasrallah said on Saturday there had been “an upgrade” in Hezbollah’s operations along its front with Israel. “There has been a…

The Israeli army said on Wednesday it was reviewing a strike that harmed Lebanese troops in south Lebanon, an apparent reference to Israeli shelling that killed a Lebanese soldier and wounded three others the previous day. “The Lebanese Armed Forces were not the target of the strike. The IDF expresses regret over the incident. The incident is under review,” the Israeli military said in a statement. Israel and the heavily armed Lebanese group Hezbollah have been exchanging fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border since the start of the war between the Palestinian group Hamas and Israel on Oct. 7. The Lebanese army said the soldier,…