VIENNA (AP) — Austrian chancellor says Russia's Gazprom will cut off natural gas on Saturday, says country has alternative supplies.
China's foreign ministry on Friday urged U.S. politicians to exercise more "common sense" after a U.S. senator called for a probe into imports of Chinese garlic, citing concerns about food safety and labour practices in the country. Republican Senator Rick Scott wrote to several U.S. government departments this week, describing in one letter Chinese garlic as "sewage garlic" and saying the use of human excrement as fertilizer in China was a serious concern. In other letters, he said garlic production in China may involve exploitative labour practices and that low Chinese prices undercut domestic growers, threatening U.S. economic security.
Bashar al-Assad confided in almost no one about his plans to flee Syria as his reign collapsed. Hours before he escaped for Moscow, Assad assured a meeting of about 30 army and security chiefs at the defence ministry on Saturday that Russian military support was on its way and urged ground forces to hold out, according to a commander who was present and requested anonymity to speak about the briefing. Assad told his presidential office manager on Saturday when he finished work he was going home but instead headed to the airport, according to an aide in his inner circle.
Even those who wish to focus solely on a possible conflict with China should recognize that Beijing has allies who almost certainly would come to its aid.
China's ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, whose remarks about Ukraine and other former Soviet states caused uproar across Europe last year, is wrapping up his tenure in Paris. Lu, 60, one of the country's most prominent Wolf Warrior diplomats who is famed for his abrasive style, is expected to return to Beijing next month, according to French media. At a farewell reception at Beijing's embassy in Paris on Monday, Lu said he would continue to support the Chinese community in France "no matter where
Russia has established direct contact with the political committee of Syria's Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov as saying on Thursday. Interfax reported that Bogdanov, speaking to journalists, also said Moscow aimed to maintain its military bases in Syria.
(Bloomberg) -- US President-elect Donald Trump invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend his inauguration next month, CBS reported, a move that would be both highly unusual and unlikely to actually take place. Most Read from BloombergHong Kong's Expat Party Hub Reshaped by Chinese InfluxBrace for a Nationwide Shuffle of Corporate HeadquartersCity Hall Is HiringAmerican Institute of Architects CEO ResignsCloud Computing Tax Threatens Chicago’s Silicon Valley DreamAfter a presidential campaig
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has ordered Israeli troops to prepare to stay over the winter on Mount Hermon, a strategic location overlooking Damascus, adding to signs that Israel's presence in Syria is set to continue for a prolonged period. "Due to what is happening in Syria - there is enormous security importance to our holding on to the peak of Mount Hermon," a statement from Katz's office said on Friday. The order suggests that Israeli troops who moved into a buffer zone inside Syrian territory as well as a "few additional points" following the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad's government are likely to remain.
In the months before Iranian ballistic missiles struck the Nevatim Airbase, Iran dispatched spies to film the site in southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A U.S. Navy warship will make a port call next week in Cambodia, China's close ally in Southeast Asia, the first such visit in eight years, according to a Cambodian statement on Friday.
Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, is ready to supply food to Syria following the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Ukrainian Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval told Reuters on Friday. Russian and Syrian sources said earlier that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended over uncertainty about the new government and payment delays. Syria imported food from Russia during the Assad era and it is unclear how relations between Damascus and Moscow will take shape under the new government.
China will continue to work to create "favourable conditions for a political solution" to the Ukraine crisis, President Xi Jinping said while vowing to strengthen "strategic synergy" with Russia, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Meeting former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in Beijing on Thursday, Xi repeated Beijing's position on the Ukraine war, saying China "repeatedly stressed" the need to adhere to three principles - "no expansion of the battlefields, no escalation of hostilities and
As Donald Trump steps up his tariff threats against China, Beijing is moving to beat the next U.S. president to the punch with its own restrictions and get Washington to the negotiating table ahead of a full-blown trade war, analysts say. Armed with the lessons of the last trade war during Trump's first term, China is seeking to amass bargaining chips to kick off talks with a new U.S. administration on contentious aspects of bilateral ties, including trade and investment, and science and technology.
DAMASCUS (AP) — Exuberant Syrians observed the first Friday prayers since the ouster of President Bashar Assad, gathering in the capital's historic main mosque, its largest square and around the country to celebrate the end of half a century of authoritarian rule.
Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was in Damascus on Thursday, two sources with knowledge of the visit told Reuters, for what the Syrian information ministry said would be talks involving its new rebel leadership. The ministry said that Kalin and Qatar's head of state security, Khalfan al-Kaabi, arrived in the capital to meet with Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and caretaker prime minister Mohammad al-Bashir. Turkey's foreign ministry denied the Syrian ministry's additional notice that Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan was also in Damascus for talks, saying he remained in Turkey.
Beijing has unveiled a new tactic on Taiwan, the democratic island it claims as its own, officials and experts say: large-scale drills with no fanfare to normalise a heightened military presence and let the U.S. know that China can act whenever it wants. For four days this week, Taiwan went on alert in response to what it said was China's largest massing of naval forces in three decades around Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas. China's military said nothing until Friday when it quoted ancient Chinese tactician Sun Tzu's Art of War, a favourite of the communist republic's founder Mao Zedong.
Israel has moved to prevent the emergence of new threats from Syria. Lebanon, meanwhile, is worried about becoming the future battlefield of the regionView on euronews
Eleven days that shook the world.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and China renewed a science cooperation agreement on Friday, the U.S. State Department said, this time with "robust national security guardrails," despite objections from Republicans who argue that the decision should have been left to the incoming Trump administration. For 45 years, the landmark U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) has yielded cooperation across a range of scientific fields, creating a framework for agency exchanges and giving the U.S. access to Chinese data useful in areas such as monitoring earthquakes, weather and influenza. But the deal, renewed about every five years since it was first signed in 1979, lapsed this year amid mounting concerns that China too often failed to uphold intellectual property provisions or reciprocity in data exchanges.
2025 is not 2018 and, while Iran was on the ropes then, things are different now.
The head of NATO just told allies they must return to a "war mindset" and "turbo-charge" defence spending to counter growing threats in what is surely the most consequential speech by an alliance chief since the Cold War. The big question is whether national governments and their publics across Europe - including here in the UK - are listening. Sir Keir Starmer appears for now to favour peacetime priorities over preparing for war.
