In a recent press conference held in Jerusalem on February 16, 2025, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu underscored their unified stance against Iran’s nuclear ambitions and regional influence. Netanyahu emphasized the strong cooperation between Israel and the United States, stating, “We agreed that the ayatollahs must not have nuclear weapons, and we also agreed that Iran’s aggression in the region has to be rolled back.”

Secretary Rubio echoed these sentiments, identifying Iran as the “single greatest source of instability” in the Middle East. He asserted, “Behind every terrorist group, behind every act of violence, behind every destabilizing activity… is Iran.”

The press conference also addressed the situation in Gaza, with both leaders expressing support for President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to redevelop the region. This plan involves U.S. ownership of Gaza, the relocation of over two million Palestinians, and transforming the area into a resort destination—a proposal that has faced widespread international criticism.

Additionally, Netanyahu issued a stern warning to Hamas regarding the release of Israeli hostages, stating that “the gates of hell will be opened” if all captives are not freed.

This joint appearance highlights the deepening U.S.-Israel alliance and their shared commitment to countering perceived threats from Iran and addressing the complex dynamics in Gaza.

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The South Korean government said Monday it has temporarily suspended the local service of Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) app DeepSeek over concerns about its data collection practices.

The Personal Information Protection Commission said the service was suspended at 6 p.m. Saturday and will be resumed after “improvements and remedies” are made in line with South Korea’s personal information protection laws.

The measures comes after multiple government ministries and agencies blocked internal access to the AI service amid concerns about the startup’s data management practices.

The commission sent a formal inquiry to DeepSeek last month to clarify the service’s data collection and management methods.

DeepSeek has since assigned a representative in South Korea and acknowledged shortcomings in considering local protection laws while also expressing its will to cooperate with the commission actively.

Source: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20250217003300315

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A US aircraft carrying a third batch of Indian nationals deported from the US landed in Amritsar, Punjab in northern India on Sunday. It comes days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi travelled to Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump, who has promised millions of deportations in his second term.

The flight had approximately 112 individuals on board, according to local media reports, with the majority hailing from the northern state of Haryana. While 44 of the deportees were from Haryana, 33 were from Gujarat (Modi’s home state), and 31 were from Punjab. The remainder were from other states.

The deportees will be allowed to return to their homes after completing all necessary procedures, including immigration processing, verification, and background checks, sources told NDTV.

The first US military C-17 transport aircraft carrying 104 Indians landed in Amritsar on February 5. A second plane landed on Saturday.

A video released by the US authorities after the first plane left showed people being held in handcuffs and leg restraints, sparking widespread outrage in India. In response, the Indian government stated that it was engaging with Washington to ensure that the deportees were not subjected to any mistreatment.

Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar stated in the Indian parliament that the deportations have been an ongoing process for several years, emphasizing that the latest round followed the same procedures as in the past, with no deviations from established protocols.  The US embassy has commented that it is “the policy of the United States to faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens.”

The issue of illegal migration from India to the US was raised by Trump in his telephone conversation with Modi in January, and reportedly figured in last week’s talks. A joint statement said the leaders agreed to address concerns related to illegal immigration and human trafficking “through co-operative efforts.”

Modi told the White House press that India is willing to take back its nationals if they are illegally in the US and mentioned a need to halt the “ecosystem” of human trafficking.

Source: https://www.rt.com/india/612868-india-plane-deportees/

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The relations between India and Canada were experiencing strains, and there were several key issues contributing but the latest and the threatening one is the murder of a Khalistani sikh leader, termed by India as a terrorist in the month of June and the latest allegation made at the Canadian parliament by Prime Minister Justine Trudeau that Indian agents involved in the separatists killing in Canadian soil and India’s denial on the issue and followed by diplomatic war includes the expulsion of each other’s diplomats from their consulates and travel advisory etc.

The latest allegation and strain of the relationship are not new and it’s been happening for the past few years. One significant factor was Canada’s comments and expressions of concern about human rights issues in India, particularly related to the farmers’ protests that had gained international attention. These comments drew criticism from the Indian government, which viewed them as unwarranted interference in its domestic affairs.

Another contentious matter was the treatment of the Sikh diaspora and allegations of support for Khalistani separatist movements in Canada. India has expressed concerns about radical elements within the Sikh community in Canada and has called on the Canadian government to take action against them.

Trade disputes also played a role in the strained relationship. Trade tensions had been escalating, with both countries imposing tariffs and trade restrictions on each other’s products, including agricultural goods and pulses.

Additionally, the suspension of direct flights between India and Canada due to COVID-19 added to the challenges in people-to-people and economic ties.

It’s important to note that diplomatic relations can change over time, and the situation between India and Canada may have evolved since my last update in September 2021. For the most current information and a comprehensive understanding of their bilateral relationship, it’s recommended to consult recent news sources and official statements from both countries.

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The dynamic between Turkey and the European Union (EU) reflects a nuanced blend of cooperation and contention. As a candidate for EU membership since 1987, Turkey has engaged in a protracted accession process, formally commencing negotiations in 2005. However, progress has been sluggish, with only a few chapters of EU legislation successfully concluded as of my last knowledge update in September 2021. Political complexities have been at the forefront of these challenges, as concerns persist regarding the erosion of democratic institutions, human rights abuses, and the rule of law in Turkey, periodically leading to the suspension of specific accession negotiations.

The longstanding Cyprus issue, characterized by Turkey’s non-recognition of the Republic of Cyprus and the unresolved conflict in Northern Cyprus, further complicates the path to EU membership. Nevertheless, economic ties remain robust, with Turkey relying heavily on the EU as its foremost trading partner. Moreover, in response to the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, the EU and Turkey have engaged in cooperative efforts to manage migratory flows, notably through the EU-Turkey Migration Deal. The future of this relationship hinges on the resolution of political disputes, the upholding of democratic principles, and finding common ground on various regional and international challenges, underscoring its significance for both parties in the ever-evolving landscape of European politics.

It’s important to note that the dynamics of international relations can change over time, and political situations can evolve. As of the last update, Turkey had not officially abandoned its EU aspirations, but the challenges were substantial. The future of Turkey’s relationship with the EU depends on various factors, including political developments in Turkey, the stance of EU member states, and progress on issues such as democracy, human rights, and the Cyprus dispute. For the most up-to-date information on this matter, it’s advisable to consult recent news sources and official statements from Turkey and the EU.

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Saudi Arabian state oil giant Aramco’s facilities in the port city of Jeddah with missiles -Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said that they had attacked Saudi Arabian state oil giant Aramco’s facilities in the port city of Jeddah with missiles and the Ras Tanura and Rabigh refineries with drones.

A major fire broke out with black smoke on Friday in the Jeddah Port’s Aramco fuel storage facilities. The Saudi state television confirmed that the attack was targeted on its fuel storage and other facilities in Jeddah. The incident reported ahead of Saudi Grand Prix – a formula 1 race was scheduled on Sunday. The Saudi Motorsport Co, acknowledged the attack but said the “race weekend schedule will continue as planned.”

Saudi Arabia Retaliated Yemani Houthis Attack

As per the official news agency of Houthis, at least 10 citizens were killed including women and children by two air raids launched by the US-Saudi-led aggression coalition warplanes on the capital Sana on Saturday.

Why Yemani Houthis Attack Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia leads a coalition battling the Iran-backed Houthis, who seized Yemen’s capital of Sanaa in September 2014. The kingdom, which entered the war in Yemen in 2015, has been internationally criticized for its airstrikes killing scores of civilians.

Source: https://www.saba.ye/en/news3180887.htm

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A China Eastern Boeing 737 with 132 people onboard crashed earlier Monday afternoon in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, causing a mountain fire. The number of casualties is not clear yet, the official website of Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said on Monday afternoon.

Shortly after the accident, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for the immediate activation of an emergency mechanism for plane crash, and asked to spare no efforts on the search and rescue, and to properly handle the aftermath.

The State Council – China’s cabinet – will assign officials to deal with the accident as a priority, identify the cause as soon as possible, and strengthen the investigation of safety hazards in civil aviation sector to ensure the absolute safety of aviation operations and people’s lives in the future, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday afternoon.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang called for all-out efforts to search for survivors and treat the injured, and emphasized the need to reassure and serve the families of the victims.

Li asked relevant departments to seriously identify the cause of the accident and take strong measures to strengthen civil aviation safety management.

According to the instruction, the CAAC, the Ministry of Emergency Management and other relevant departments have sent working groups to the scene to guide the on-the-scene handling of the accident, and dispatched rescue forces on the provincial level and from the neighboring province of Guangdong. The handling of the aftermath and the investigation of the cause of the accident are under way.

This is the first air crash in China since a fatal incident took place in Yichun, Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province back in 2010. The Yichun crash killed 44 people.

The plane, MU 5735, took off from Kunming Changshui airport in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province at 13:15, and was scheduled to arrive at Guangzhou, South China’s Guangdong Province at 15:07.

Sources told the Global Times that China Eastern Airlines has decided to ground all of the company’s Boeing 737-800 planes.

The crashed plane has 132 onboard, including 123 passengers, and nine crew members.

China Eastern has also dispatched working groups to the site.

At present, rescue teams have been deployed and are approaching the crash site, Xinhua reported.

At around 3 pm Monday, the Wuzhou Fire Brigade deployed a rescue team to the scene of the accident, an officer from the brigade told the Global Times on Monday.

“We sent 25 fire engines and 117 firefighters to the scene, but as the accident site is too remote and in the mountains, fire engines could not reach the wreckage, firefighters had to enter on foot,” said the brigade officer via phone.

The first deployment of firefighters has already arrived on the scene, with backup available if needed, the Brigade said.

Flight data from information provider VariFlight showed that after flight MU5735 took off from Kunming airport, it had been cruising at an altitude of about 8,869 meters. At 2:19 pm, the aircraft suddenly descended from cruising altitude, while flight speed also began to decrease from about 845 kilometers per hour. At 2:21, flight MU5735 lost its ADS-B radar signal also losing contact with the ground.

Judging from aircraft data, there is no information on the pilot’s ground information contact. It is very likely that the aircraft lost power at cruising altitude resulting in the pilot losing control of the aircraft. This is a very serious technical failure in which the plane inevitably enters a high-speed descent, Wang Ya’nan, chief editor of Beijing-based Aerospace Knowledge told the Global Times on Monday.

However the specific reason can only be determined when the black box has been recovered, he noted.

In terms of aircraft casualties, the situation appears grim, and the possibility of all onboard perishing cannot be ruled out. Moreover, search and rescue is difficult due to terrain around the crash site, while the impact of wildfires will present a high risk to anyone who managed to survive the crash, he said.

Meanwhile, an unidentified number of flights departing from Kunming, Yunnan Province, operated by China Eastern Airlines Monday afternoon were canceled, including flights to Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province, and Xiamen, East China’s Fujian Province.

The aircraft involved is a Boeing 737-800, belonging to the Yunnan subsidiary of China Eastern Airlines and has been in operation of just over six and a half years. The plane was delivered in June 2015.

As of February 19, 2022, the continuous safe flight time of China’s civil aviation transport aviation had exceeded 100 million hours, representing the best safety performance in the history of China’s civil aviation industry and the best continuous safe flight record in the history of civil aviation worldwide.

Shares of China Eastern Airlines plummeted more than 10 percent in US trading premarket

Source: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202203/1256395.shtml

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A powerful magnitude 7.4 earthquake hit off northeastern Japan late Wednesday, leaving at least two people dead and more than 160 injured and causing a high-speed shinkansen train to derail.

Two men in Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, the areas hit hardest by the 11:36 p.m. quake, died, while the injuries reported as of Thursday morning occurred across a total of 12 prefectures, according to local authorities and the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told a parliamentary session that authorities are looking into a total of four deaths apparently caused by the quake.

The quake also prompted the Japan Meteorological Agency to issue a 1-meter tsunami warning for the Pacific coast of Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, but the warning was lifted Thursday morning after only relatively small tsunami waves were observed.

“We will take all possible measures to respond (to the disaster),” Kishida told the Diet. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said there have been no problems with safety at nuclear power plants in the quake-hit areas.

The temblor, which came two minutes after a magnitude 6.1 quake, registered an upper 6 on Japan’s seismic intensity scale of 7 in parts of Miyagi and Fukushima, the agency said.
At an intensity of upper 6, many people find it impossible to remain standing or move without crawling. The jolts are strong enough to toss people through the air, according to the agency.

The quake, which occurred in waters off Fukushima Prefecture at a depth of about 57 kilometers, was also felt across a wide swath of the country. The agency is warning of quakes of a similar scale in hard-hit areas for the next week or so.

A Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train derailed between Fukushima Station and Shiroishizao Station, but all the 78 passengers and crew members on board were unharmed, according to East Japan Railway Co.

JR East said it halted the operation of bullet trains between Nasushiobara Station and Morioka Station from Thursday morning because of the accident.
The operator said it will take a few days to examine total damage from the quake and that the timing for the resumption of services remains unclear, suggesting that the stoppage may potentially last for a long time.

The Defense Ministry dispatched the Self-Defense Forces for disaster relief in Fukushima Prefecture after receiving a request from its governor. The SDF will provide water service in areas where supply has been suspended due to the quake.

Fire departments in Miyagi and Fukushima received numerous calls requesting emergency assistance, while reports emerged of many people suffering injuries in the coastal city of Soma in Fukushima.

Injuries were reported in not just Miyagi and Fukushima but also Iwate, Akita, Yamagata, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama, Kanagawa, Yamanashi, Chiba and Niigata prefectures, a Kyodo News tally showed.

The quake caused power outages in northeastern and eastern Japan, affecting a total of more than 2.2 million households, including some 700,000 in Tokyo, according to TEPCO Power Grid Inc. and Tohoku Electric Power Network Co. Power was later restored to most.
The country’s nuclear regulator said data shows no abnormalities with reactors and facilities at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, though the cooling system for the spent fuel pools at the No. 2 and No. 5 reactors temporarily stopped.

Cooling systems for spent fuel pools at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant and the Onagawa nuclear plant in Miyagi were also affected before recovering.

A fire alarm went off in the turbine building of the No. 5 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, but no abnormalities were found. The seaside plant suffered multiple meltdowns in March 2011 after being hit by a quake-caused tsunami.
The government set up a crisis management center at the prime minister’s office. Kishida told reporters he instructed officials to gather relevant information and make utmost effort to rescue the injured and respond to those affected by the quake.

The late-night quake left many Japanese, particularly those in northeastern Japan, unsettled as it struck just days after the 11th anniversary of the M9.0 quake that devastated the region.

Source: https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/03/dd0c6da7d879-urgent-2-killed-92-injured-after-m74-quake-hits-northeastern-japan.html

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Lack of foreign currency in the country and the rise of inflation coupled with the steep increase of fuel prices led the common men in Sri Lanka to resort to protests in streets and even tried to storm the presidential palace on Tuesday asking the president’s resignation.

Long queues in the petrol stations and black out across Sri Lanka is a norm now. Prices for medicine, food, fuel, cooking gas, milk, rice, and all gone up drastically. Fuel prices alone rose to 40% and the shortage led to transportation a standstill. The average citizen’s ability to make ends meet is becoming increasingly difficult. While power cuts have been the latest hardship to hit the Sri Lankans. the Ceylon Electricity Board said it will continue with the 7.5 hour power cuts, despite assurances from the country’s leadership that power outages would come to an end from March 5. With shortages of LP Gas, the power cuts have exacerbated the injuries caused to small business owners.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa held and emergency meeting with visiting IMF officials and the Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa rushed to Delhi to met with Prime Minister Modi for an emergency aid of 100 million USD where in India already lend Sri Lanka with140 million USD. There are unconfirmed reports that Reserve Bank Governor Ajith Cabraal has been asked to resign from the post by the country’s President.

Why the Economic Crisis in Sri Lanka?

Sri Lanka depends on imports, due to covid the main industry, tourism suffered a huge setback and caused a foreign currency deficit to pay for imports. The country has de-valuated Sri Lankan currency to 15% in a desperate attempt to get foreign loans and that led to inflation.

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Iran has released 2 British-Iranian nationals jailed for espionage activities against Iran, Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashouri were released on Wednesday.

Before her release, Britain paid $530 million (400 million pounds) to Iran, to settle a debt related to an unfulfilled military contract that dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, before Tehran released Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

There is no further information on the Iranian national that has been released in the exchange.

Reports said earlier today that Iran has released two British-Iranian nationals jailed for involvement in espionage activities against the Islamic Republic, with the pair preparing to leave the country.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri are heading to a Tehran airport to leave the country, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told Reuters on Wednesday.

Ashouri, who previously lived in Southeast London with his family, was detained in August 2017 and was sentenced to 10 years in prison for cooperating with Israel’s spy agency Mossad and two years for obtaining 33,000 euros in “illicit funds” nearly a year later.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 43, had been found guilty of plotting to orchestrate a soft overthrow of the Islamic Republic and has been in jail since 2016.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was arrested in Tehran in April 2016 as she was returning to Britain.

While the British media have claimed that she was arrested after a family visit and not on any mission, former British Foreign Secretary and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson disclosed in remarks to a parliamentary committee that Zaghari-Ratcliffe was “simply teaching people journalism as I understand it” when she was arrested at Tehran airport.

Back in October 2017, the prosecutor general of Tehran stated that she was being held for running “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”.

Britain has delayed the payment for many years citing problems faced because of foreign sanctions against Iran.

However, Tehran has insisted the debt should be settled regardless of issues that exist between Iran and the West.

The money is owed to Iran over an upfront payment made by the former Shah of Iran to Britain to buy 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other military vehicles.

Johnson on Tuesday declined to comment on Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case and whether there have been direct talks on the debt issue in Tehran although he admitted that talks on consular cases have been going on for a long time.

Later in the day, British lawmaker Tulip Siddiq said Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her British passport returned.

“I am very pleased to say that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been given her British passport back,” Siddiq said on Twitter.

Source: https://www.farsnews.ir/en/news/14001225000760/Iran-Frees-Spy-Zaghari-Racliffe-afer-Ending-Five-Year-Prisn-Term

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