French satirical weekly, Charlie Hebdo, has announced it will be republishing hugely controversial sketches of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). The sketches will be published to mark this week’s start of the trial of alleged attackers who massacred twelve people at Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris in 2015, owing to the same controversy.
In a recently released statement, the India army has said it has foiled an attempt by Chinese troops to change the status quo on their dispute border. “On the night of August 29/30, 2020, PLA troops violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements during the ongoing standoff in Eastern Ladakh,” the Indian army said in a statement.
An Israeli-American delegation will fly on the first commercial flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates on Monday after a landmark deal between the countries. Jared Kushner, top aide and son-in-law to US President Donald Trump, has confirmed he will be on the flight, alongside National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. Israel’s national Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat will be leading the “professional delegation”.
A freelance photojournalist from Indian occupied Kashmir, has been awarded the 2020 Peter Mackler Award for Courageous and Ethical Journalism. Masrat Zahra was named winner for her work covering events in occupied Kashmir with a specific focus on women in the region. Zahra will be honoured with the award in a virtual ceremony in New York on Sept 24, 2020.
Saudi Arabia has refused to establish diplomatic ties with Israel until the Jewish state has signed an internationally recognised peace accord with the Palestinians. Days after the United Arab Emirates became the first Gulf state to normalise relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan ruled out the possibility of any such accord until the Palestinian issue is resolved.
Reports about a side agreement of sale of F-35 and advanced drones between United States and United Arab Emirates has come as a shock to Israel, which claims to have been kept in the dark. The sale, which could reduce Israel’s military advantage in Middle East, was a condition of the emerging normalization agreement between Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi that was brokered by Washington.
The United Arab Emirates’ agreement to normalise ties with Israel was a “sovereign decision” that was not directed at Iran, UAE minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said on Monday. Speaking on Saturday, Rouhani said the UAE had made a “huge mistake” in reaching a agreement to normalise ties with Israel and called it a betrayal by the Gulf state.
Following an extensive two-year flight test programme, Airbus has successfully concluded its Autonomous Taxi, Take-Off and Landing (ATTOL) project. The project saw one of its jets perform normally pilot-flown maneuvers entirely on its own. The A350-1000 XWB acted as the testbed for the project through fully automatic vision-based flight tests using on-board image recognition technology – a world-first in aviation.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone for the Ayodhya temple next month, in a highly anticipated ceremony at a holy site, which was once a 460-year-old mosque. The Indian Supreme Court ruled in November last year that a temple could be built in Ayodhya, where Hindu zealots demolished the Mughal era Babri Masjid [mosque] in 1992.
A Chinese-made vaccine for coronavirus has entered the final stage of testing in Brazil. The vaccine, developed by private Chinese pharmaceutical firm Sinovac Biotech entered the final phase after volunteers received the first doses of the drug. It became the third in the world to enter Phase 3 clinical trials, or large-scale testing on humans — the last step before regulatory approval.