Iran advanced to the final with a victory over Bosnia on Thursday in the semi-finals. Apart from Bosnia, Iran have already defeated Germany and Brazil in the Games.
Iran’s national sitting volleyball team have made the final at every Games since debuting sitting volleyball.
Iranian athletes snatched two gold medals on the 11th day of the Tokyo Paralympics 2020.
In total, Iran has won 11 gold medals in the games so far.
“Our Tunisian affair should be resolved only among Tunisians, UGTT union will not participate in the invitation of the American embassy,” UGTT union spokesman Sami Tahri stressed on Friday.
Tahri added UGTT – which plays a key role in Tunisia’s political scene – did not accept the bullying of foreigners in the time of former Western-backed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and “will not accept it today and tomorrow”.
The remarks came amid reports that US Senator Chris Murphy would lead a congressional delegation to discuss the path forward to “protect democracy in Tunisia” in a visit on Saturday, after President Kais Saied’s seizure of governing powers in July in an extraordinary measure was dismissed by local critics as a coup.
The US delegation, which will visit Tunisia as part of a regional visit that included Lebanon, Israel and the West Bank, intends to discuss with local officials and politicians the crisis in Tunisia.
Even the country’s Free Constitutional Party, led by Abir Moussi and a supporter of Ben Ali — toppled in the 2011 revolution – as well as the Achaab Party – allied with Saied — rejected the invitation to hold talks with the American delegation, saying there is no way to accept any interference in local crisis.
Saied dismissed on July 25 his prime minister, froze parliament and assumed executive authority in a sudden intervention that his opponents have censured as “a coup” but he justified as necessary to save the country from collapse.
He then extended the unprecedented move indefinitely just last week, with his office issuing “a presidential decree extending the exceptional measures… regarding the suspension of Parliament and lifting of the parliamentary immunity of its MPs until further notice”.
The president is to address the nation in the coming days, the statement said, without providing further details.
Saied’s postponement in appointing a new government or announcing his longer-term plans has sparked further anxiety among many Tunisians fearing a lack of direction in the face of major economic challenges or even a return to autocracy.
He is widely anticipated to announce new measures that would reassure a highly anxious Tunisian public and allay international concerns about Tunisia entering an authoritarian era.
Saied dismissed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi and suspended parliament for 30 days in July, following mass protests in several cities against the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tunisia’s biggest political party Ennahda denounced the move as “arbitrary” and “unjustified”.
Saied has noted he would assume executive authority “with the help” of a government whose new chief he would personally appoint.
Ever since, authorities have placed several officials, including former ministers, under house arrest. Several politicians, lawmakers, businessmen and judges also say they have been banned from traveling abroad.
Apart from plunging the country into a political limbo, the latest developments have exacerbated political polarization in Tunisia.
Source: Press TV
Emergency Hospital in Kabul reported 17 bodies and 41 wounded people were transferred to its facility with the harm caused by last night’s citywide firing into the air.
“Celebratory gunfire” was heard in Kabul amid conflicting reports over the situation in Panjshir valley where Taliban fighters are fighting rival forces for control of Afghanistan’s final holdout province.
According to media reports, hundreds of fighters from both sides have lost their lives during the fighting over the past few days.
In a tweet, Taliban Spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid asked militants not to fire guns in the air because it was a waste of ammunition and could hurt civilians.
The Taliban captured the majority of Afghanistan by August 15 as US troops were in the final stage of withdrawing from the country after a nearly two-decade-long occupation. The last US soldiers left Kabul on August 30.
Source: TOLO News
The situation in Afghanistan has demonstrated that neither the United States nor NATO are capable of coordinating their actions, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated on Friday.
“The situation in Afghanistan has graphically demonstrated that neither NATO in general nor the United States in particular are capable of effectively coordinating their actions. Moreover, the United States has proved to be absolutely impotent as a steering force. And videos of the self-destruction of the ‘invincible machine’, shown across the globe, demonstrate it more convincingly than any military calculations that NATO is an absolute failure as a military-political bloc claiming a leading role in securing world order,” she wrote on her Telegram channel.
She drew attention to the fact that despite its failure in Afghanistan NATO is planning to conduct a lot of drills, especially in the Baltic and Eastern European countries and build up its presence in the Arctic.
“Judging by the catastrophe in Afghanistan, NATO needs drills in the mountains and steppes rather than on pasture lands and meadows. But, they seem to be too absorbed in virtual confrontation with Russia,” she stressed.
“The alliance’s decline is obvious. Vehicles from Iraq were at least brought to the Baltic countries and this junk was donated to the vassals. In Afghanistan, they were so drained that they opted to leave their cars and helicopters to those who they were used against,” she added.
After the Joe Biden administration announced the end of its US military operation in Afghanistan and the launch of its troop pullout, the Taliban embarked on an offensive against Afghan government forces. On August 15, Taliban fighters swept into Kabul without encountering any resistance, and gained full control over the Afghan capital within a few hours. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani claimed he had stepped down to prevent any bloodshed and subsequently fled the country. Western nations finished evacuation of their nationals and Afghans working for them by August 31.
Source: TASS
Arbaeen marks the 40th day after the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Imam Hussein at the battle of Karbaka, in today’s Iraq, by the army of tyrant of the time Yazid 1382 years ago.
Raisi said if the Iraqi authorities agree, fully vaccinated citizens will be allowed to travel to Iraq after approval by the Iranian Ministry of Health.
Each year, millions of Iranians participate in Arbaeen mourning ceremonies in the Iraqi city of Karbala. Elsewhere in his remarks, Raisi said the Iranian Interior Ministry and social commissions in provinces must study the psychological impact of Covid on people and explore ways of tackling the psychological harms the disease inflict. He added that it’s fortunate that side effects of foreign and Iranian Covid vaccines have been low.
The Iranian president said the lower side effects of Iranian vaccines compared with foreign ones will be reassuring for people in the face of the propaganda of ill-wishers who question the capability of Iranian experts. He ordered the Interior Ministry and governors in border areas to inoculate foreign nationals to prevent Covid from spreading further.
Raisi described the vaccination pace in Iran as “encouraging”. He referred to the rise in vaccine imports and domestic production, demanding health officials speed up the inoculation process in the coming weeks so all age groups get their jabs.
According to the JHU, more than 219,828,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 worldwide and over 4,553,800 have died, as the more-infectious Delta variant threatens areas with low vaccination rates and strains healthcare systems in poor countries.
The United States is currently the leading country in terms of confirmed novel coronavirus cases, which exceed 39,850,300 million [with 647,580 deaths].
The virus-hit country is followed by India (with 32,945,900 cases and 440,225 deaths) and Iran (with more than 5 million cases and over 109,500 deaths).
Earlier in the day, the United States imposed sanctions on four Iranian nationals with links to Iran’s intelligence agency who allegedly plotted to kidnap US citizen Masih Alinejad.
“Beyond this specific plot, the United States remains aware of ongoing Iranian interest in targeting other American citizens, including current and former US officials,” Blinken said in a news release.
Blinken added that the United States refuses to tolerate efforts to intimidate independent journalists or to silence dissidents, especially US citizens.
Earlier Friday, the Treasury Department listed Alireza Shahvaroghi Farahani, Mahmoud Khazein, Omid Noori and Kiya Sadeghi as the designated individuals.
The FBI accused the four men of participating in an alleged plot to kidnap Alinejad, an Iranian- American activist. The four were indicted in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on several charges including conspiracy related to kidnapping.
Source: Sputnik
She passed away on Friday night at the age of 35 after a 10-day battle with the respiratory disease in the intensive care unit in a Tehran hospital.
The Shahrara editor-in-chief said Manshadi was an experienced journalist who spent 14 years working for the Iranian daily.
Iran is grappling with its fifth wave of coronavirus outbreak. Over 110,000 Iranians have so far lost their lives to COVID-19.
“The transfer of any kind of vaccines into and out of the country is subject to permission by the [Iranian] Food and Drug Organization, and such a permit has not been issued, so far, for coronavirus vaccines, including Sputnik,” said Kianoush Jahanbakhsh, the spokesman for the Food and Drug Organization.
He said such a claim is a “sheer lie” as the Russian side has not yet approved the initial Sputnik vaccine produced by an Iranian private company for mass-production under the Russian license.
“The Sputnik Light vaccine has been produced in the form of batch tests and has been waiting for weeks to receive final approval from Russia’s Gamaleya institute for mass-production”, he added.
IRNA had earlier quoted Mohammad Kariminia, the head of Iran’s Biodefense Headquarters, as saying that Tehran and Moscow have agreed that the Sputnik vaccine be produced in Iran and then delivered to Russia, something which, as he added is being done at the moment.
“We can’t wait forever as Iran continues its nuclear advances because at some point their advances will be such as to make a return to the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] much less valuable to the US than it would otherwise be,” Malley said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Malley added that the US was “prepared to be patient” but noted that unless progress was being made again on negotiations that at some point “we’ll have to reach a different conclusion”, a similar outlook to that expressed by Biden recently in remarks during a White House visit by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
If diplomacy fails with Iran, then “we’re ready to turn to other options”, Biden stated.
Former US President Donald Trump abandoned the accord in 2018 and began imposing tough sanctions on Iran.
The sixth round of talks between Tehran and world powers on reviving the 2015 nuclear accord ended on June 20, days after Ebrahim Raisi won Iran’s presidential election.
Stalled talks aimed at reviving Iran’s nuclear agreement with world powers will likely not resume for another two to three months, according to Tehran’s foreign ministry.
“We are not seeking to flee the negotiation table and the government considers a real negotiation is a negotiation that produces palpable results allowing the rights of the Iranian nation to be guaranteed,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said during an interview broadcast on Tuesday evening by state television.
The Vienna talks are “one of the questions on the foreign policy and government agenda”, he added.
But “the other party knows full well that a process of two to three months is required for the new government to establish itself and to start taking decisions”, he noted.
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