Spotlight
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Middle East
Netanyahu threatens 'very heavy price' if any side behind flydubai incident
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Friday that Israel would impose a "very heavy price" on any power behind the flydubai incident, wi...
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Lebanon
Salam visits Nabatieh, says scale of war recovery beyond state capacity
Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Friday that rebuilding regions destroyed in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war is beyond the state's capacity, calling...
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Middle East
Trump vows to hit Iran 'very hard' if linked to flydubai attack
U.S. President Donald Trump warned on Thursday that Iran will be "hit very hard" if it is found to be linked to a pilot's attack on a flydubai ...
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Prime Minister Nawaf Salam on Monday called for the further implementation of a framework agreement with Israel in his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington.
Hezbollah attacked Israel in March this year, the latter responded with massive airstrikes and a ground invasion that killed more than 4,300 people.
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France prosecutors on Monday sought two years with an electronic tag and a five-year ban on public office for ex-culture minister Rachida Dati in a trial on corruption charges linked to dealings with the Renault-Nissan group.
They sought a four-year jail term for Carlos Ghosn, the fugitive former Renault-Nissan chief now living in Lebanon, who is being tried in absentia as part of the same trial in Paris.
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Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea lashed out Monday at Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem, accusing him of bringing about the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, after Qassem criticized the framework agreement with Israel.
Qassem on Sunday told supporters gathered in Dahieh to mark two years since the killing of longtime leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah that with the framework agreement, "the authorities are helping the Israeli-U.S. project instead of confronting it".
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Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Carlos Alcaraz are all obsessed with it, and on Monday the fast-growing racquet sport of padel made its Asian Games debut with officials hoping a place at the Olympics is getting closer.
Padel, a cross between tennis and squash on courts surrounded by glass walls, is played by an estimated 38 million people and has ambitions to become a major global sport.
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Israel's upcoming elections are being followed closely by its regional neighbors, who are aware that any outcome will have ramifications far beyond the country's borders.
In his Likud party's campaign launch this month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his refrain that he "has changed the face of the Middle East" and vowed to continue doing so.
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Hezbollah supporters gathered near the tomb of their late former chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday to mark the second anniversary of his killing by Israel, defiant even as two wars have left the Iran-backed group weakened.
AFP correspondents saw thousands of people, many carrying Hezbollah flags, rallying for the commemorative event in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold that Israel bombed during conflicts this year and in 2024.
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State media in Iran on Monday reported that no new talks were planned with the United States, after U.S. President Donald Trump told media he expected more negotiations.
"Iran's delegation in New York (for the U.N. General Assembly) has no plans for negotiations with the United States," said the official IRNA news agency, citing an unnamed source close to the group.
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Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem said on Sunday that Israel had been unable to break his Iran-backed group, at a ceremony marking two years since Israel killed the group's longtime leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah.
Hezbollah has demonstrated that Israel and its soldiers "were unable to achieve their goals to break the resistance, end its existence, consolidate the Israeli occupation and establish settlements in Lebanon," Qassem said in an address televised at a gathering in Beirut's southern suburbs attended by thousands of the group's supporters in commemoration of Nasrallah.
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Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Sunday for the annexation of areas of south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip currently under Israeli military control and for Israeli forces to "go to war" against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
"I would like us to annex at least as far as the Yellow Line in Gaza (which demarcates the areas under Hamas and Israeli control) and as far as the Litani River in Lebanon... because if a war ends along the same lines where it began, what will deter the enemy from going to war again," Smotrich said in a podcast for Israeli news site Ynet.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that he had sent envoys around the world to pressure countries to economically isolate Iran, hailing new restrictions targeting the country's airlines and banks.
"At my direction, teams were dispatched across the globe to engage with countries and demand action against the Iranian regime," he said on X. "These efforts are delivering results."
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