Georgia suspends talks on joining the EU for 4 years, accusing the bloc of 'blackmail'

Associated Press

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Georgia suspends talks on joining the EU for 4 years, accusing the bloc of 'blackmail.'

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  • Defence minister orders Israeli troops to prepare to spend winter on Mount Hermon

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  • Kyiv ready to supply food to Syria as Russia supplies suspended

    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.

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    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.

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  • Before his ouster, Syria's Assad told Iran that Turkey was aiding rebels to unseat him

    In the final days leading to his ouster, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad complained to Iran's foreign minister that Turkey was actively supporting Sunni rebels in their offensive to topple him, two Iranian officials told Reuters this week. Five decades of rule by Assad's family ended on Sunday when he fled to Moscow, where the government granted him asylum. Iran had backed Assad in Syria's long civil war and his overthrow was widely seen as a major blow to the Iran-led "Axis of Resistance", a political and military alliance that opposes Israeli and U.S. influence in the Middle East.

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    U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Turkey on Thursday for talks focused on a critical aspect of establishing stability in Syria: clashes in the north of the country between U.S.-backed Kurdish forces and Turkey-backed rebels. Blinken met President Tayyip Erdogan at Ankara's Esenboga Airport after visiting Jordan on his first trip to the region since Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government was ousted on Sunday.

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