Author: Arshad Shaheen

Berlin (25/7 – 16.67) The table is set for the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast to remain a geopolitical hotspot. Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO), eastern Tajikistan, is the home to the Pamir Mountains, also called “the roof of the world”, whose sharp mountain ranges and deep valleys resemble a lunar landscape. A far-flung frontier, situated in a troubled neighborhood, next to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, GBAO is a geopolitical treasure tethered to exterior interests: the authoritarian central Tajik government in Dushanbe, Chinese economic and military interests, and Russia, which historically frames the Pamirs as a part of its…

Israel will build a 100 billion shekel ($27 billion) rail expansion that will connect its outlying areas to metropolitan Tel Aviv and, in the future, could provide overland links to Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday, reports Reuters. The announcement followed a trip by top US officials to Saudi Arabia last week to advance a possible forging of formal relations between the Muslim powerhouse and Israel. Opening the weekly Israeli cabinet meeting, Netanyahu appeared to sidestep the constitutional crisis that has roiled the country for seven months, denting its economy and shaking Western allies’ confidence in its democratic health. Instead,…

Inkript, a digital security solutions provider in the Middle East and Africa, will be producing the first commercialized biometric payment card in the world based on Zwipe’s platform. This biometric payment card will be made available by Kuwait International Bank (KIB) to its VIP customers. This announcement was made during Seamless Middle East 2023 at Inkript stand where the company was showcasing its latest solutions and services to a pool of visitors from the payments, fintech, identity and retail industries, among others. On this occasion, Riad Itani, Managing Director at Inkript Industries, explained the importance of this milestone and said,…

The United Arab Emirates in the coming days will lift a temporary restriction on issuing visas to Lebanese nationals imposed due to security concerns, a UAE official told Reuters on Thursday. “Temporary restrictions are in place in response to security concerns. Temporary restrictions continuously undergo review and are subject to be lifted for specific categories of visas in the coming days,” the UAE official said, without giving further details. Lebanese citizens have been reporting in recent weeks that visas for Lebanese outside the UAE were not being granted Two travel agents in Lebanon told Reuters they were unable to request visas for Lebanese nationals to…

The European Union (EU) understood Lebanon’s concerns about hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees on its territories and was ready to engage in constructive dialogue, said the bloc’s ambassador to Lebanon on Tuesday. “The European Union remains ready to engage in a constructive dialogue on these issues within the limits imposed by our respect for Lebanon’s sovereignty,” Ralph Tarraf was quoted in a statement released by his delegation as saying. Tarraf added that Lebanese and European citizens are concerned with social cohesion and economic imbalances when opening doors to others in large numbers. He said finding a balance is delicate…

Lebanon’s judiciary’s disciplinary council on Thursday removed from office Judge Ghada Aoun, who brought charges against the country’s central bank governor and commercial banks, the local al-Jadeed TV reported. While the reasons for dismissing Aoun were not made public, she has been reported to have faced complaints over her conduct. According to al-Jadeed report, around 12 complaints against Judge Aoun were reviewed by three Judges in the judiciary’s disciplinary council before making this decision. The National News Agency reported later in the day that Judge Aoun appealed against the decision of the judiciary’s disciplinary council. Last year, Aoun charged Central…

Qatar said its position regarding normalizing ties with Syria remains unchanged, Qatar’s foreign ministry said on Sunday. In a statement carried by the QNA, Majed bin Mohammad Al Ansari, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that Qatar always seeks to support achieving Arab consensus and will not be an obstacle to that. Yet he said the official position of Qatar on normalization with “the Syrian regime” is a decision linked primarily to progress in the political solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Syrian people. Qatar will “work with the Arab brothers in achieving the aspirations of the…

Qatar has started to use AI speech-to-text technology in public prosecution to boost efficiency, local media reported Thursday. The system will be used in criminal investigations and editing legal documents in addition to manual input. It will speedily extract useful information from speech and put them down in text, according to Gulf Times’ report. It would enable the Qatar Public Prosecution to better play its role and ensure the timely delivery of justice, the report added. Testing of the system in certain prosecution scenarios showed it has high accuracy, the report cited the public prosecution as saying.

The Qatari Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are expected to reopen their embassies in the coming weeks. Majed bin Mohammad al-Ansari, the ministry’s spokesperson, made the announcement at a weekly press briefing, according to the ministry’s statement. He said there was positive progress in the meetings of the technical committees that work to facilitate the reopening of their embassies. “The issue is currently procedural and it is expected to reopen the embassies in weeks,” he noted. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic ties with Qatar in 2017 and imposed…

The Qatari-Bahraini Follow-up Committee on Wednesday decided to restore diplomatic relations between Qatar and Bahrain in line with the principles of the United Nations Charter and the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961, the Qatar News Agency (QNA) said. The decision was made during the second meeting of the committee at the headquarters of the General Secretariat of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the QNA said. Both sides have said that the decision stems from a mutual desire to foster the development of bilateral relations and promote integration and unity within the…