Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday war was unlikely but called on Iran’s armed forces to boost their defence capacities, according to his official website, as the country faces increased tension with the United States. On Saturday, Iran announced plans to boost its ballistic and cruise missile capacity and acquire modern fighter […]
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Police in Germany’s southern state of Bavaria are investigating two officers suspected of performing the illegal Hitler salute. The German constitution makes it a crime to exhibit Nazi symbols and the incident is likely to feed into a heated debate about racism and the rise of the far right after a record influx of mainly […]
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Turbulence in China’s restive far western region of Xinjiang has been caused by “external factors”, a state-run newspaper said Saturday in an editorial responding to calls by a group of U.S. lawmakers for sanctions on Chinese officials. “Western accusations of Xinjiang governance seriously misled the extremists, making them believe they were launching religious Jihad and […]
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A British man was sentenced to life in prison on Friday over a plot to kill Prime Minister Theresa May by first detonating an explosive device to get into her Downing Street office and then using a knife or a gun to attack her. Naa’imur Rahman, 21, of north London, planned to detonate an improvised […]
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Punjab’s new information minister, Islamist politician Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, has announced a ban on “vulgar” movie billboards in the Pakistani province, angering those who fear the growing influence of hardliners under new Prime Minister Imran Khan. Since Khan’s party appointed him last week, Chohan has caused a number of rows, including with his visit to the […]
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The Zion Church in Beijing, one of the city’s largest unofficial Protestant “house” churches, has operated with relative freedom for years, hosting hundreds of worshippers every weekend in an expansive, specially renovated hall in north Beijing. But in April, city authorities asked the church to install 24 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the building for […]
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British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites. The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive […]
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Jordan said on Thursday it would lead a campaign to raise funds for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, to help it survive after the United States cut its funding. Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said a meeting next month in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly would mobilise support for […]
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An Islamist party in Pakistan called for the expulsion of the Dutch ambassador on Wednesday as it launched a protest against a far-right Dutch politician’s plan for a cartoon competition featuring caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed. Several thousand activists gathered in the eastern city of Lahore for the demonstration organised by Tehreek-e-Labbaik, a party […]
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Social media, including Facebook, must proactively block content inciting hatred and prevent online campaigns which target minorities, such as those undertaken in Myanmar, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was speaking after U.N. experts accused Myanmar generals of “genocidal intent” and said Facebook […]
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