Author: Akiner Balbay

Prominent Russian media outlets chose Kazakhstan’s holiday of national sovereignty to widely disseminate a false news item about the opening of a supposed NATO facility in the country. Well-established titles such as Moskovsky Komsomolets and Argumenty i Fakty were among several publications that reported on October 23 that a would-be “NATO peacekeeping center” had opened in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. For pictorial evidence, they ran an image of U.S. ambassador Daniel N. Rosenblum cutting a ceremonial ribbon. The original source for the alleged facility opening appears to have been a Telegram channel best known for its eager cheerleading of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The…

Israel’s tourism minister traveled to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, the first public visit by an Israeli minister to the kingdom, said Israel’s Ministry of Tourism in a statement. Haim Katz “is the first Israeli minister to head an official delegation in Saudi Arabia,” the statement reads. The visit also came amid talks between the two countries to normalize relations. Katz will attend a conference sponsored by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in the kingdom during his two-day trip, it added. “Tourism is a bridge between nations,” Katz was quoted as saying in the statement. “Cooperation in the field…

Saudi Arabian ICT service provider Saudi Call, Chinese Shanghai Lumaotong Group (LMT) and China Mobile International Limited (CMI) will launch the construction of data centers in the kingdom. According to a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) inked in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday, the parties will cooperate for the construction of 100MW Tier III & Tier IV Saudi Call Crownland Data Centers in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, and Neom. These facilities will offer integrated solutions, including storage, network coverage, and database services, to support the ever-growing business needs of the region’s digital economy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and big data. Saudi Call…

On September 5, the New Tashkent city draft master plan was presented to the president. After the presentation, Davronjon Odilov, Deputy Minister of Construction, Head of the New Tashkent City Development Management company unveiled some information about the project. “Our president gave the instruction: “I want to build a city that communicates closely with nature, relies on our traditions, brings the community of the neighborhood and the public closer to each other, and makes it prosperous.” They chose the most convenient place for this. All ecologists and experts gave a positive opinion on the selected area. According to him, the…

Uzbek Ambassador Ravshan Usmanov met with the Minister of Transport of Malaysia Loke Siew Fook, the Dunyo said in a statement. Reportedly, the parties discussed the prospects of cooperation between Uzbekistan and Malaysia and in particular, exchanged opinions on the ways to advance cooperation in the field of air transport and railway. The Minister welcomed the launch of Tashkent to Kuala Lumpur flights from November of this year by the Malaysian airline company Batik Air. He recognized the work carried out by the working group on the study of the corridors connecting the two countries by railway, and expressed the…

Israel’s military has started test-flying Oron, a Gulfstream G550-based reconnaissance aircraft equipped with intelligence systems. The Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that after integrating the intelligence systems into “the cutting-edge” Oron aircraft, the military has started test flights. The aircraft will provide the Israeli military with “unprecedented intelligence capabilities across expansive terrain, enabling real-time monitoring of ground movements under diverse weather and visibility conditions,” the ministry said. Head of the Defense Ministry’s Missionized Aircraft Branch, identified in the press release only by his first initial, Y, said that the “Oron” is “a joint multi-domain, multi-sensor solution which…

Israel on Tuesday announced the set-up of an advanced site for generating electricity from household waste and agricultural trimmings. The site will be built on an area of 40,000 square meters at Eshkol, Israel’s largest agricultural regional council in the west of the Negev Desert, close to the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, according to a joint statement by the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and the southern Eshkol Regional Council. As one of Israel’s largest environmental projects, the facility is expected to cost about 300 million shekels (79.4 million U.S. dollars) and handle about 200,000 tonnes of waste…

Israel’s Iron Dome aerial defense system shot missiles at an “unidentified aircraft” over the skies of the Gaza Strip on Monday morning, marking a second consecutive day of such an incident, the Israeli military said. The military indicated in a statement that its Iron Dome system had been activated, after the aircraft, apparently a drone, was “spotted flying over the Gaza Strip toward Israel.” At least two interceptor missiles were launched to target the aircraft, but it was not immediately clear whether they hit it, the military said, adding that the aircraft did not cross into Israeli territory. This follows…

Palestinian authorities on Friday rejected the Israeli government’s plan to allocate 190 million U.S. dollars fund to deepen settlement construction in the West Bank by financing random outposts. The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said that the right-wing Israeli government “is racing against time to steal more land to accelerate the undeclared gradual annexation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” in response to the plan raised by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “We live the echo of the expansionist colonial Israeli policy every day amid an escalation of violations and crimes of the occupation authorities and settlers, which is a practical…

Israeli archaeologists discovered a 5,500-year-old city gate in the south of the country, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said in a statement on Tuesday. The gate, the earliest known in the ancient land of Israel, was found during excavations at the Tel Erani archaeological site that were conducted ahead of government works to lay a water pipe near the city of Kiryat Gat. Tel Erani, occupying an area of about 150,000 square meters, was an important urban center in the region in the Early Bronze period. The gate was part of the city’s fortification system, reflecting the beginning of urbanization…