Author: ALJAZEERA

Two explosions have killed nearly 100 people and wounded over 200 others at a ceremony in Iran to commemorate the death of top commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in 2020. Wednesday’s attacks took place in the southeastern city of Kerman along the road leading to Kerman’s Martyrs’ Cemetery. While no one has claimed responsibility and it was not immediately clear what caused the blasts, Iranian officials have blamed a “terrorist attack”. “The evil and criminal enemies of the Iranian nation once again created a disaster and martyred a large number of dear people in Kerman,” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah…

TikTok is a lot like the young people on its platform – difficult to control. Earlier this year, the fate of the short-form video app in the United States hung by a thread as several states looked to imposed restrictions on its use, and one state, Montana, legislated on a ban. And yet, TikTok seems set to enter 2024 on solid footing. After all, which political party would want to start an election year banning a platform on which 150 million mostly-young Americans spend their lives? The app survived a year in which its CEO was subjected to a five-hour…

McIlroy has softened his stance on LIV Golf and says he has accepted it as ‘part of our sport now’.Rory McIlroy says if LIV Golf was modelled like cricket’s Indian Premier League (IPL) and staged over two months, then he would consider playing in it. The 34-year-old Northern Irishman has been a vocal opponent of the Saudi Arabia-funded LIV Golf, once saying he would retire rather than play in it “if it was the last place to play golf on earth”. However, he has toned it down of late – especially after his friend, fellow Ryder Cup star and formerly…

The world economy has proved more resilient than most analysts anticipated at the start of 2023. In particular, global inflation has fallen without big surges in unemployment. But policymakers, desperate to engineer a “soft landing“, are not out of the woods yet. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), global output, while highly fragmented, will slow in 2024 as high interest rates snuff out persistent inflation and, by extension, economic activity. The Paris-based organisation does not anticipate growth to edge up until 2025, at which point leading central banks are expected to aggressively slash borrowing costs. Until…

A general strike has been called across the cities of the occupied West Bank in protest against the assassination of seven members of Hamas, including the deputy head of its political bureau, Saleh al-Arouri. The strike was called by Palestinian armed groups that asked people to stay home on Wednesday and only leave to march in demonstrations against the drone attack on the outskirts of Beirut. The slain men are Saleh al-Arouri, who was also the commander of the Qassam Brigades in the occupied West Bank; Samir Fendi, who commanded the Qassam Brigades in Lebanon; Azzam al-Aqraa, who commanded the…

Indian agency was probing the group after Hindenburg Research last year alleged the improper use of tax havens and stock manipulation.India’s Supreme Court says the Adani Group does not need to face more investigations beyond the current scrutiny of the market regulator, a major relief for the conglomerate hit hard by a United States-based shortseller’s allegations of wrongdoing. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has been probing the Adani Group, led by billionaire Gautam Adani, after Hindenburg Research in January 2023 alleged the improper use of tax havens and stock manipulation by the group. The Adani Group denied…

In July 2006, in the middle of Israel’s war on Lebanon that ultimately killed approximately 1,200 people – the overwhelming majority of them civilians – then-United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nobly cast the onslaught as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”. While the metaphor was no doubt appropriately Orientalist, it did raise some questions since the objective of the birthing process is not usually to kill the baby. What role Rice and her boss, then-US president George W Bush, were meant to play in the metaphorical arrangement was also debatable, but “bloodthirsty obstetricians” was one potential…

US District Judge William Shubb rules that legislation’s disclosure rules are not ‘unjustified or unduly burdensome’.Elon Musk’s X has lost a bid to block a California law that forces social media companies to publicly reveal how they carry out content moderation on their platforms. X sued the state of California in September, arguing that the first-of-its-kind legislation violates the United States Constitution’s protections of freedom of speech. Under the measures signed into law last year by California Governor Gavin Newsom, social media firms are required to submit twice-yearly reports on how they tackle hate speech, misinformation and other objectionable content.…

Senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri has been killed in an Israeli drone strike on Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh, the Palestinian group and Lebanese media outlets say. Al-Arouri was killed on Tuesday in a “treacherous Zionist strike”, Hamas said on its official channel. Hamas politburo member Izzat al-Sharq called it a “cowardly assassination”. Al-Arouri was a senior official in Hamas’s politburo but was known to be deeply involved in its military affairs. He had previously headed the group’s presence in the occupied West Bank. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the blast killed at least six people and was carried…

Accra, Ghana – On a weekday this December, the fabrics section at Accra’s frenzied Makola market was unusually quiet for the festive end-of-year period. Female traders with big woven hats sat in front of their stalls chatting and tiredly swatting away flies. Behind them, colourful African wax textiles were stacked in rows from ground to ceiling, waiting to be bought. Vida Yeboah, one of the traders, said the stalls would normally be teeming with customers hunting for the latest designs to take to their tailors to cut up and sew into different styles from wide-mouthed A-Line dresses, to tops and…