Netanyahu at Biden's urging will send Israeli officials to Washington to discuss prospective Rafah operation

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Netanyahu at Biden's urging will send Israeli officials to Washington to discuss prospective Rafah operation.

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    Israel wasted no time after Bashar al-Assad’s fall to bomb all the Syrian military assets it wanted to keep out of the rebels’ hands – striking nearly 500 targets, destroying the navy, and taking out, it claims, 90% of Syria’s known surface-to-air missiles.

  • Russia accelerates Syria exit as it suspends grain supply

    Russia has accelerated its military withdrawal from Syria and suspended a grain deal with the country over concerns about the rebel-led government.

  • Biden administration inks renewed science cooperation deal with China; Republicans cry foul

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States and China renewed a science cooperation agreement on Friday, the U.S. State Department said, this time with "robust national security guardrails," despite objections from Republicans who argue that the decision should have been left to the incoming Trump administration. For 45 years, the landmark U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA) has yielded cooperation across a range of scientific fields, creating a framework for agency exchanges and giving the U.S. access to Chinese data useful in areas such as monitoring earthquakes, weather and influenza. But the deal, renewed about every five years since it was first signed in 1979, lapsed this year amid mounting concerns that China too often failed to uphold intellectual property provisions or reciprocity in data exchanges.

  • Analysis-China's new tactic against Taiwan: drills 'that dare not speak their name'

    Beijing has unveiled a new tactic on Taiwan, the democratic island it claims as its own, officials and experts say: large-scale drills with no fanfare to normalise a heightened military presence and let the U.S. know that China can act whenever it wants. For four days this week, Taiwan went on alert in response to what it said was China's largest massing of naval forces in three decades around Taiwan and in the East and South China Seas. China's military said nothing until Friday when it quoted ancient Chinese tactician Sun Tzu's Art of War, a favourite of the communist republic's founder Mao Zedong.

  • Russia ‘not leaving’ two main bases in Syria

    Russia is pulling back its military from northern Syria and posts in the Alawite Mountains but is not leaving its two main bases, four Syrian officials told Reuters.

  • China FM says 'deeply concerned' about Syria in talks with Egypt counterpart

    China's foreign minister Wang Yi told his Egyptian counterpart on Friday that Beijing is "deeply concerned" about the situation in Syria, as the two top diplomats met in the Chinese capital."The two sides are deeply concerned about the current situation in Syria and call for respect for Syria's sovereignty," Wang told journalists, urging the prevention of "terrorist and extremist forces from taking advantage of the chaos".

  • Analysis-China eyes negotiations as Trump threatens new tariffs

    As Donald Trump steps up his tariff threats against China, Beijing is moving to beat the next U.S. president to the punch with its own restrictions and get Washington to the negotiating table ahead of a full-blown trade war, analysts say. Armed with the lessons of the last trade war during Trump's first term, China is seeking to amass bargaining chips to kick off talks with a new U.S. administration on contentious aspects of bilateral ties, including trade and investment, and science and technology.

  • Before his ouster, Syria's Assad told Iran that Turkey was aiding rebels to unseat him

    In the final days leading to his ouster, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad complained to Iran's foreign minister that Turkey was actively supporting Sunni rebels in their offensive to topple him, two Iranian officials told Reuters this week. Five decades of rule by Assad's family ended on Sunday when he fled to Moscow, where the government granted him asylum. Iran had backed Assad in Syria's long civil war and his overthrow was widely seen as a major blow to the Iran-led "Axis of Resistance", a political and military alliance that opposes Israeli and U.S. influence in the Middle East.

  • First Friday prayers held in Syria since fall of al-Assad

    HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa called on Syrians to celebrate the fall of Bashar al-Assad peacefully in the squares, asking them to refrain from using gunfire.View on euronews

  • Blinken makes unannounced trip to Iraq as international community grapples with Syrian regime collapse

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq Friday to meet with Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as the international community grapples with the implications of the Syrian government’s collapse.

  • Trump says Syria 'not our fight'. Staying out may not be so easy

    The incoming US president has vowed not to involve America in foreign conflicts, but Assad's dramatic fall has upended the region's balance of power.

  • US updates a science and technology pact with China to reflect growing rivalry and security threats

    The U.S. has updated a decades-old science and technology agreement with China to reflect their growing rivalry for technological dominance. The State Department said the agreement sustains intellectual property protections, establishes new guardrails to protect the safety and security of researchers and "advances U.S. interests through newly established and strengthened provisions on transparency and data reciprocity.” It covers only basic research and does not facilitate the development of critical and emerging technologies, the department said.

  • Israel accuses an ‘unprecedented’ number of Israelis of spying for Iran

    In the months before Iranian ballistic missiles struck the Nevatim Airbase, Iran dispatched spies to film the site in southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

  • G7 to meet on Syria, government pledges 'rule of law'

    G7 leaders will attempt Friday to forge a common approach to the new government of Syria, which has pledged to protect the rule of law after years of abuses under ousted president Bashar al-Assad."A judicial and human rights committee will be established to examine the constitution and then introduce amendments," he said, pledging that "rule of law" would be instituted.

  • US officials have been in direct contact with the Syrian rebel group that ousted Assad, Blinken says

    American officials have been in direct contact with the terrorist-designated rebel group that led the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday. Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Jordan, was the first U.S. official to publicly confirm contacts between the Biden administration and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which led a coalition of armed opposition groups that drove Assad from power and into asylum in Russia last weekend.

  • Emmanuel Macron plans China visit amid talk of Beijing helping end Ukraine war

    French President Emmanuel Macron is planning to visit China in the new year, as speculation swirls about Beijing's potential role in ending the Ukraine war. According to several sources familiar with the matter, Macron's trusted diplomatic adviser Emmanuel Bonne travelled this week to Beijing with a team of aides to lay the groundwork for a trip by the French leader. Bonne's visit was timed to coincide with Macron's return this week from Poland. There, Macron and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tus

  • China urges efforts to curb Syria's descent into division and a refugee crisis

    Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has called for international efforts to prevent Syria from descending into further division and another refugee crisis, responding on Friday for the first time to the sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad's Beijing-friendly regime last week. Wang also called for efforts to maintain the regional reconciliation brought by the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran in a peace deal brokered by Beijing last year. "The international community sho

  • Ukraine's Zelenskiy to meet European leaders in Brussels on Wednesday

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will attend a meeting with the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, NATO and the EU in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss support for his country in its war with Russia, sources familiar with the plan told Reuters. The meeting comes as European countries face the possibility of the U.S., Ukraine's largest source of support, changing its approach to the conflict when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January. Zelenskiy and some of his European allies have called for European troops to be deployed to Ukraine to act as a deterrent to further military action by Russia after any ceasefire.

  • Blinken makes unannounced Iraq visit as part of Syria diplomacy push

    BAGHDAD (Reuters) -U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Friday and met with Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to discuss Syria's political transition, calling for a non-sectarian administration following the fall of Bashar al-Assad. The top U.S. diplomat is touring the Middle East to establish a united front with Arab and Turkish allies on the set of principles that Washington hopes will guide Syria's political transition, such as inclusivity and respect for minorities. Washington was taken aback by the shockingly speedy collapse of the Assad government after 13 years of civil war and the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden is urging the victorious rebels to create a government that eschews Islamist factions.

  • Australia deploys rugby diplomacy to tempt neighbour away from China

    Australian government will invest £300m in a new rugby league team based in Papua New Guinea. But there’s a catch – and it has nothing to do with the sport