Author: Silan Asur

Duhok’s security forces (Asayish) released journalist Islam Kashani on bail early Saturday days after detaining him for alleged ties with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).  Kashani, head of the Islamic Speda TV’s office in Duhok, was arrested on Thursday. Local and international rights groups strongly criticised the local authorities for the action. Mohammed Sadiq, head of Kurdistan Journalists Syndicate’s Duhok branch, told Rudaw that Kashani was released on bail in the early hours of Saturday. The Syndicate, local rights groups and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) condemned the arrest, calling for his immediate release. Zakho security forces…

Russia launched a drone strike on Ukrainian ports on the Danube on Wednesday night. The port of Izmail received serious damage. Port and industrial infrastructure facilities were destroyed there, fires broke out. This was announced in a telegram by the head of the Odessa regional administration Oleg Kiper. There is no information about the victims. Later, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine confirmed that the elevator, grain sheds, tanks of one of the cargo terminals, production, storage and administrative premises, as well as the building of the sea station were damaged as a result of the drone attack in Izmail. The department published photos of the destroyed objects. The…

Moscow and Kyiv step up retaliatory attacks as Ukraine seeks to dislodge Russian forces in the country’s south and east. Russia says it shot down a drone heading for Moscow in the third such attack in a week, while officials in both Russia and Ukraine have confirmed Ukraine targeted two bridges linking Crimea to the mainland. Both countries have stepped up strikes on each other’s troops, weaponry and infrastructure as Kyiv seeks to dislodge Russian forces who have dug in across southern and eastern Ukraine since their invasion of the country last year. The Moscow-appointed head of Crimea said the Chonhar…

Propagandist Dmitry Kiselev in his program named the total amount of contracts that the state concluded with the Wagner PMC and Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Concord holding – the Kremlin spent at least a trillion rubles. Source: Kiselev quoted by RIA Novosti Kiselyov’s direct speech : “The Wagner Group, as part of the contracts concluded with the state, received a little more than 858 billion rubles. This is under a trillion. Under other contracts, Prigozhin’s holding, Concord, separately provided services worth another 845 billion rubles. This does not mean that they have earned so much, but it still speaks of the scale of the business and the…

The contracted soldier was wounded on June 15 during the “Operation Claw-Lock.” A contracted infantry soldier who was wounded in a clash on June 15, has lost his life while undergoing treatment at the hospital, according to an announcement by the Ministry of National Defense. Private Özcan Kaya was wounded during the ongoing “Operation Claw-Lock” conducted by Turkey in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) territory in Iraq. Defense Minister Yaşar Güler expressed his condolences and shared a message of sympathy for the 25-year-old soldier. Kaya’s funeral is scheduled to take place tomorrow in the village of Öksüz, located in the…

Frankfurt, Brussels (3/7 – 27) France has been plagued by multiple outbreaks of rioting following mass protests over the death of a teenager at the hands of a police officer last week. The death of Nahel M. (17), teenager of North African descent, has stoked anger among the public at police violence against minorities and exacerbated existing racial tensions in France. Protests have spread beyond the capital city of Paris and its suburban areas, to other major cities, including Lyon, Marseille, Le Havre, Toulouse and Nantes. On Sunday (2/7/2023), a day after Nahel’s funeral in Nanterre, 719 people were arrested…

Hundreds of people protested in Stockholm on Sunday against new anti-terror legislation that was passed to address Turkey’s opposition to Sweden joining NATO. The demonstration was organised by groups close to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), outlawed by Turkey, which this week warned against “terrorists” being allowed to demonstrate in Sweden. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has so far blocked Sweden’s NATO membership, accusing Stockholm of being a haven for the Kurdish activists. To address his concerns, Sweden passed a new law that criminalises “participation in a terrorist organisation”. “They are after the Kurds in Sweden,” Tomas Pettersson, spokesperson for…

Kyrgyzstan is the only country in Central Asia where the number of female migrant workers exceeds that of men, with a sizeable proportion of the women under the age of 20. But some politicians in the remittances-dependent nation want to impose restrictions on young, unmarried women traveling abroad alone for work. The politicians have argued that young women often face exploitation and other hardships as migrant workers. Last month, conservative lawmaker Nadira Narmatova suggested that women should not be permitted to go abroad for work until at least the age of 23. Speaking at a discussion focused on women and…

Taliban increasingly eager to show their alleged ability to benefit the more than 40 million inhabitants of the Afghanistan have begun to push the accelerator pedal on a work that threatens to undermine the fragile water balance central asian. On the other hand, the benefits of the initiative for i growers Afghans would be undeniable. The work in question is the Canale Qosh Tepaan infrastructure that will allow part of the river’s water flow to be removed Amu Darya, the main waterway in the region, to ensure better irrigation for over 500,000 hectares of Afghan territory. Thousands of people are working on the canal, which once…

Crude prices rose for a third session on Wednesday as a halt to some exports from Iraqi Kurdistan raised concerns of tightening supplies and fears of a global banking crisis eased. Brent crude futures gained 16 cents, or 0.20%, to $78.30 a barrel by 0357 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude rose 35 cents, or 0.48%, to $73.69 a barrel. “Worries over reduced supply from Iraq’s Kurdistan region and a relief in financial markets worried about the banking sector turmoil continued to boost investors’ risk appetite,” said Satoru Yoshida, a commodity analyst with Rakuten Securities. “Expectations that the U.S.…