Author: Sabryia Reman

The country’s most important archaeological find has been compared to Machu Picchu. Here’s how to see it At first glance, it doesn’t look like much, just a rectangular meadow in the Pamir foothills of central Tajikistan. But there was a time when this ground reverberated with the thunder of hooves. Occupying a broad saddle, high above the mighty Panj River, this meadow is believed to be an ancient arena for the Central Asian sport of buzkashi, or dead goat polo. The playing field was a centerpiece of a once sprawling settlement, a political and religious capital inhabited for centuries but since lost to…

The head of Erbil’s Soran administration on Saturday said that a lack of knowledge of basic safety protocols was a contributing factor in the deaths of 14 people in a fire the day before. “One of the reasons is the people’s lack of awareness of how to evacuate the building in such cases,” Halgurd Sheikh Najib, supervisor of Soran administration, told reporters in a press conference. The building, which houses many students and lecturers of Soran University, caught fire late on Friday. At least 14 people were killed and four others were injured. Najib said the building had emergency escape…

Much like its ideological counterparts at HispanTV (Iranian-owned) and Actualidad RT (Russian-owned), Telesur wraps its incitement into a sophisticated and slick twenty-four-hour news platform through its website, broadcasts, and social media presence. Though it is difficult to gauge its influence, numbers suggest that Telesur’s message is impactful. Telesur has two million followers on its Spanish X account, 117,500 on its English X account, and more than half a million on Instagram. Its YouTube account has over 1.7 million subscribers, with 100,000 new subscribers and almost 7.4 million video views since October 7 (It also posts its videos on the Daily Motion). The network traditionally pushes out conspiracy theories, fake news, “whataboutism,”…

Piles of garbage have accumulated on the streets of Sulaimani province’s Sitak, ruining the area’s beautiful nature and causing concern among local herders and residents. The herders are worried their livestock would ingest the trash and plastic bags and become infected. “All our animals have started eating plastic bags due to the trash piling up. We have cows that have died, and we sliced off their belly and found there were a lot of plastic bags inside,” Bahadin Bakir, Kani Waisa village council member in Sitak, told Rudaw’s Nizar Jaza on Tuesday. The concerns are not only among those who…

London (15/11 – 67) Colombo Supreme Court rules that former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, former Prime Minister Mahinda, were among several government officials whose conduct contributed to Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis in decades. The court was ruling on a petition filed against 13 former officials by rights group Transparency International Sri Lanka (TISL) which said the Rajapaksa brothers and others were responsible for the crisis. “Their actions, omissions and conduct contributed to the crisis,” the ruling said. The court did not order any punishment, according to a statement by TISL. The two Rajapaksa brothers, two former central…

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani received on Saturday the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert in Erbil, where they discussed the Region’s upcoming parliamentary elections. “The meeting focused on current developments in Iraq, emphasizing the need to safeguard the constitutional rights and financial entitlements of the Kurdistan Region,” read a statement from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). “Perspectives were also shared regarding the situation in the Kurdistan Region, underscoring the need to conduct the parliamentary elections as scheduled on February 25, 2024,” it added. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) authorities have come under mounting…

Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Wednesday called on Kurdish political parties to work together to run a successful election campaign while attending the congress of a rival party in Sulaimani, with the region expected to hold its parliamentary elections in February 2024. “Election needs to be the priority as it is the basic principle for the legitimacy of authority and governance in Kurdistan Region,” said Barzani during a speech at the congress of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) held in Sulaimani. Barzani said that the Kurdish political parties must work together to ensure a successful election campaign next…

Berlin (22/10 – 75) UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, reported during his trip to the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in Tajikistan, he met with representatives of civil society and residents of the region. Varennes arrived in Tajikistan for a working visit on October 9 till October 20. The UN Special Rapporteur told journalists that the residents of Gorno-Badakhshan informed him about violations of their rights in 2021-2022, particularly concerning the rights of detainees and cases of harsh treatment by law enforcement agencies. He stated, “People are complaining about religious restrictions as well as limitations on the use…

Vienna, Brussels (26/9 – 36) David McCallum – the British actor who played as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, a pathologist on hit CBS TV program NCIS, has died aged 90 on Monday (25/09/2023). McCallum died on Monday of natural causes, surrounded by his family, at New York Presbyterian Hospital, CBS said in a statement. NCIS executive producers Steven D. Binder and David North shared their memories of working with McCallum. “For over twenty years, David McCallum endeared himself to audiences around the world playing the wise, quirky, and sometimes enigmatic, Dr. Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard,” they shared in a statement. “But…

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Thursday held a meeting with officials from the Iraqi Turkmen Front in Erbil, calling on them to resolve their differences and prepare for the upcoming local elections in Kirkuk province, an attendant of the meeting told Rudaw. Aydin Maruf, politburo member of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, attended the meeting.  “We Turkmens always want to be a good factor to improve Kurdistan Region’s ties with Turkey, and Iraqi-Turkish relations. We mostly talked about the condition of Turkmens in Iraq and Kurdistan Region. We also talked about coexistence of religious and ethnic groups in the Kurdistan Region,”…