Author: ALJAZEERA

Polls have closed in Iran’s presidential run-off which pits centrist Masoud Pezeshkian against hardliner Saeed Jalili in the race to succeed Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May. The second round on Friday comes as neither contender secured an outright majority on June 28, with Pezeshkian receiving about 42.5 percent of votes and Jalili some 38.7 percent. While polls were originally scheduled to close at 6pm local time (12:30 GMT), they were extended until midnight local time (20:30 GMT). The election is being held against the backdrop of heightened regional tensions over Israel’s war on Gaza, Iran’s…

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An Israeli delegation has travelled to Qatar after a new Hamas proposal earlier this week generated renewed hope for a truce agreement, as fighting continues to rage across Gaza. The Israeli negotiators, led by spy chief David Barnea, met mediators in Doha on Friday, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The talks were set to resume next week, the office said, when another negotiating team would be deployed to Qatar. The office added there were still “gaps between the parties” in their positions. The latest development came after Hamas on Wednesday said it had presented new “ideas” to…

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Complaints to US government from travellers are the highest since the COVID pandemic when airlines were slow to refund.Air travel got more miserable last year, if the number of consumer complaints filed with the United States government is any measure. The Department of Transportation said Friday that it received nearly 97,000 complaints in 2023, up from about 86,000 the year before. The department said there were so many complaints that it took until July to sort through the filings and compile the figures. That’s the highest number of consumer complaints about airlines since 2020, when airlines were slow to give customers refunds…

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General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan tells Al Jazeera many countries remain silent over alleged RSF crimes in Sudan’s civil war.Sudan army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has said “many countries remain silent and turn a blind eye” to crimes allegedly committed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the country’s more-than-year-long civil war. Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. Since the war broke out, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions more have been displaced as…

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Netherlands and Turkey have hit top form at the right time and will go up against each other in an exciting quarterfinal. Who: Netherlands vs Turkey What: Euro 2024 quarterfinals Where: Olympiastadion Stadium in Berlin, Germany When: 9pm local time (19:00 GMT) kickoff on Saturday, July 6 How to follow: Al Jazeera will have live text commentary of the game, including three hours of build-up. Although not the glamour tie of the quarterfinals, Netherlands and Turkey could provide one of the most memorable encounters. Netherlands nervy qualification in third sport in their group was followed by their best performance of Euro…

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Dozens missing after fishing vessel left from border of Senegal and Gambia with 170 believed to have been on board.At least 89 migrants and refugees bound for Europe have died, with dozens still missing, when their boat capsized off the coast of Mauritania, according to state media. The fishing boat capsized on Monday about 4km (2.4 miles) from the West African country’s southwestern coastal city of Ndiago. The Mauritanian coastguard recovered 89 bodies and rescued nine people, including a five-year-old girl, said the state news agency on Thursday. Survivors quoted by state media said the boat had departed from the…

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In the spring of 1962, the air in Beni-Mazouz, a small village nestled in the mountainous wilaya (province) of Jijel, was charged with anticipation. My father, then a young boy, remembers vividly the day the French colonial forces began their retreat from Algeria. As a convoy of more than 100 tanks and vans trundled towards the port of Skikda, he remembers a sense of freedom swelling in his heart. “We were beyond happy,” he recalls. As far as he could see, the streets were awash in a sea of green, white and red – the colours of our flag –…

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