Saudi Arabian King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud held a telephonic conversation with US President Donald Trump in which he said that it is necessary for the international community to move forward the Middle East peace process.

According to a Saudi Press Agency report on Tuesday, the Saudi king on Monday evening reaffirmed the kingdom’s steadfast position on the Palestinian cause and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.

The conversation came amid rising tensions between Israel and the Palestinians following the bloody clashes in the past days near the Israeli border with Gaza Strip that have left at least 15 Palestinian protesters dead and 1,200 others injured.

The Saudi king expressed his appreciation for a statement issued by the White House on its strong stance towards the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen.

The Houthi militias have stepped up their attacks on Saudi targets by firing missiles at the kingdom in retaliation for the Saudi-led Arab coalition’s airstrikes in Yemen.

The Saudi leader also pledged to make efforts to find a political solution to the Yemeni crisis and provide humanitarian aid to its people.

At the same time, the two leaders underlined the importance of the achievements of the concerted international efforts to fight terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria.

An air strike by Saudi-led coalition near Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeidah killed at least 14 civilians, including seven children, medics and witnesses say.

A Saudi-led coalition air strike has killed at least 14 civilians, including seven children in Yemen.

The missiles hit a housing compound in the rebel-held city of Hodeidah.

China has slapped new tariffs on 128 US products, including pork and fruits, worth about $3 billion in response to the duties on imports of steel and aluminium imposed by the Trump administration, its Ministry of Commerce said on Monday.

The ministry said the central Cabinet has decided to impose a tariff of 15% on 120 American products, including fruits and related products, and a tariff of 25% on eight items, including pork and related products, imported from the US.

The decision was a “countermeasure” in response to the US move to slap tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, it said in a statement.

US President Donald Trump had on March 23 signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs up to $60 billions on imports from China and restrictions on Chinese investment in America.

China’s Ministry of Commerce had announced last week that it was considering suspending tariff concessions on 128 categories of US products, including pork, wine and seamless steel tubes, worth $3 billion, according to a report by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

The ministry on Monday said China advocates and supports a multilateral trade system, but suspending tariff concession on the US imports was a “just move” to safeguard the country’s interests using the Word Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.

Although in violation of the WTO rules, the US measure, which came into effect from March 23, has severely undermined China’s interests, the statement said.

Despite worldwide objections, the US decided to impose a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminium from many countries, including China, the Xinhua reported.

China is keeping big-ticket items like soybeans, sorghum and Boeing airplanes for heavy tariffs to counter Trump’s imposing tariffs on Chinese products to reduce about $375 billion trade deficit between the two countries.

After signing the memorandum, Trump had asked China to immediately cut trade deficit by $100 billion.

The memorandum is based on the Section 301 investigation into alleged Chinese intellectual property and technology transfer practices, launched by the Trump administration in August 2017, according to the report.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe to visit Trump in April to align strategy aimed at Pyongyang giving up its nuclear programme.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he will travel to the US in mid-April to discuss with President Donald Trump how to put “maximum pressure” on North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme.

In a statement on Monday, Abe told reporters he will visit the US from April 17 to 20 to meet Trump at his vacation home in Florida.

“I hope to have in-depth discussion with President Trump on North Korea and other issues concerning both of our countries over our two-day meeting,” the prime minister said.

Abe said “maximum pressure” is needed, until Pyongyang abandons its nuclear and missile programme “in a verifiable and irreversible way”, Japanese broadcster NHK reported.

Has North Korea won vital support from China before the Trump summit?
The April meeting comes ahead of a planned summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in May.

The announcement of the potential breakthrough meeting set off a slew of diplomatic back-and-forth in the Asia-Pacific region, including a surprise meeting between Japan’s regional rival, China and Kim in Beijing in late March.

The deal to hold a summit followed a flurry of events during last February’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, brightening prospects for a dialogue between the US and North Korea.

Abe also said he wants to take up with Trump the long-standing issue of North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens decades ago.

There were an estimated 17 Japanese nationals who were reportedly snatched by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s. At least five abductees returned to Japan in 2002.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Abe will also ask Trump to exempt Japan from the new tariffs on steel and aluminium imports.

Suga said the two leaders will discuss free trade, “as this is an issue of mutual interest”.

In recent weeks, Trump imposed new tariffs on steel and aluminium products from China, while Beijing hit back with retaliatory tarrifs on US products.

Seven police officers died and at least 10 inmates were injured in a weekend riot at a prison in the eastern Mexican state of Veracruz, local authorities reported on Sunday.

The riot broke out about 10 pm on Saturday in the La Toma state prison, located in the mountain city of Amatlan de Los Reyes, where 1,300 prisoners demanded that the warden and the police chief at the facility be fired, Xinhua reported.

Officers with the anti-riot force under the authority of Veracruz’s Public Safety Secretariat entered the prison to try and bring the rioting inmates under control.

The state government in a press release announced that upon entering the facility, the police were repelled by the inmates who had gained access to certain carpentry tools and had set fire to mattresses.

Seven police officers died during the operation, which concluded about 6 am on Sunday, when security forces were finally able to retake full control of the prison.

The burning of the mattresses, the bulletin said, “could have caused the asphyxiation of the police,” but experts with the State Attorney General’s Office are investigating the cause of death of the officers.

At least 10 prisoners were injured during the operation. Outside the prison, Federal Police, Mexican marines, the state police and the Military Police were on guard to prevent inmates’ relatives from gaining entry to the facility.

Prisoners’ relatives confronted the officers and demanded that Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes come to the site to report to them on the situation.

The state of Veracruz has been beset by a rising spiral of violence over the past decade due to the presence of drug trafficking gangs and cartels.

Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, on Monday, returned to London after her first visit to Pakistan since she was shot in the head by Taliban militants for advocating girls’ education more than five years ago.

Malala, 20, arrived in Islamabad on March 29, six years after she was shot by a gunman for campaigning for female education in 2012 in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Local media footage showed a smiling Malala along with her parents at the airport in Islamabad to take a flight back to London after the four-day visit.

The visit was kept highly secret and hardly anyone knew until she landed in Islamabad and was driven in security to a hotel. On her visit, she met Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at the PM House where a ceremony was also organised in her honour.

“I have been dreaming of returning to Pakistan for the past five years,” teary-eyed Malala had said. She also made an emotional visit to her hometown in Mingora area of Swat district where she lived, went to school and was attacked in 2012.

“So much joy seeing my family home, visiting friends and putting my feet on this soil again,” she had tweeted about the visit, terming Swat as: “The most beautiful place on earth to me.” Malala, who is currently studying at Oxford University, also said that she plans to return to Pakistan after completing her studies in Britain.

The famed human rights activist was shot at by the Taliban gunman in December 2012 for her female education campaigning in the Swat Valley in northeastern Pakistan. Severely wounded, she was airlifted from one military hospital in Pakistan to another and later flown to Great Britain for treatment.

Post the attack, the Taliban released a statement saying that they would target Malala again if she survived. At age 17, Malala became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her education advocacy in 2014 when she shared the coveted honour with India’s social activist Kailash Satyarthi.

Unable to return to Pakistan after her recovery, Malala moved to Britain, setting up the Malala Fund and supporting local education advocacy groups with a focus on Pakistan, Nigeria, Jordan, Syria and Kenya. Malala began her campaign aged just 11 when she started writing a blog for the BBC’s Urdu service in 2009 about life under the Taliban in Swat, where they were banning girls’ education.

In 2007, the Islamist militants had taken over the area and imposed a brutal rule. Opponents were murdered, people were publicly flogged for supposed breaches of the sharia law, women were banned from going to market, and girls were stopped from going to school. The Taliban, who are opposed to the education of girls, have destroyed hundreds of schools in Pakistan.

Read more at https://www.udayavani.com/english/news/international/282746/malala-concludes-first-visit-pak-shooting#Kc6gOXETD7KJY3Kr.99

Palestinians mourn 17 killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during Land Day march calling for return of Palestinian refugees.

Funerals have begun for the 17 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces as thousands marched near Gaza’s border with Israel to mark the 42nd anniversary of Land Day.

Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip held the funeral for 30-year-old Sari Abu Odeh late on Friday.

He was shot dead earlier in the day after Israeli forces fired live ammunition at protesters and used tear gas to push them back from a heavily fortified fence as they began a planned six-week demonstration demanding the right of return for refugees.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 1,400 others were wounded at the demonstration which commemorated Land Day, which stems from March 30, 1976, when six unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli forces during protests against the Israeli government’s decision to expropriate massive tracts of Palestinian-owned land.

Mohammed Najjar, 25, was shot in the stomach during a clash east of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, while Mahmoud Muammar, 38, and Mohammed Abu Omar, 22, were both shot dead in Rafah.

Among the other victims were Ahmed Odeh, 19, Jihad Freneh, 33, Mahmoud Saadi Rahmi, 33, Abdelfattah Abdelnabi, 22, Ibrahim Abu Shaar, 20, Abdelqader al-Hawajiri, Sari Abu Odeh, Hamdan Abu Amsheh, Jihad Abu Jamous, Bader al-Sabbagh and Naji Abu Hjair, whose ages remain unknown.

Earlier on Friday, Omar Waheed Abu Samour, a farmer from Gaza, was also killed by Israeli artillery fire while standing in his land near Khan Younis, just hours before the demonstrations.

Funerals for the rest of those killed are set to take place throughout the day on Saturday.

In honour of those killed, the Palestinian Authority declared Saturday a day of “national mourning”.

“Schools, universities, as well as all government institutions, across the country will be off on Saturday, as per President Mahmoud Abbas’ decision to declare a day of national mourning for the souls of the martyrs,” a statement issued on Friday said.

Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinian rights in Israel, condemned the Israeli army’s use of force, calling it a “brutal violation” of international law.

“Live gunfire on unarmed civilians constitutes a brutal violation of the international legal obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants,” the group said in a statement.

It also said that it would launch an investigation to “demand that those found responsible for the killings be brought to justice”.

WATCH: Land Day – Palestinians protesting the expropriation of their land (2:40)
Yara Mahamid, a student from Gaza told Al Jazeera, that Israeli aggression wouldn’t deter Palestinians from protesting.

“We came to commemorate Land Day because we have to confront the [Israeli] state.

“We came out to remember our martyrs and to reclaim ownership of our land. We will resist until our last breath. We shouldn’t negotiate anymore. We shouldn’t give up our rights,” she said.

This year’s Land Day comes on the heels of months of anger over US President Donald Trump’s decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem.

It is widely expected the US will be transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the run-up to the Nakba, “day of catastrophe”, on May 15, when Israel was officially declared a state and more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes.

Aljazeera

Former Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi has said that the perception in Pakistan that Iran’s Chabahar Port project, that connects India to Afghanistan, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, is a “rival project of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)”, is not correct.

“The Chabahar Port project is aimed at connecting Iran with Central Asia, and the ultimate goal is to uplift the Iranian economy,” Kharazi said at an event here. The project was under deliberation for a long time, therefore, it was not correct to link its launch with that of the CPEC, he was cited as saying by Dawn online on Saturday.

India, Iran and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement in 2016 to jointly develop the Chabahar Port, opening a new strategic transit route between the three nations and other Central Asian nations, bypassing Pakistan.

On the other hand, the CPEC connects China’s Kashgar in Xinjiang province with Pakistan’s Gwadar port in Balochistan through a network of roads, railways and highways.

India strongly objects to the route of the CPEC corridor, which goes through Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Kharazi, Iran’s Foreign Minister from 1997 to 2005, said that though it was true that India had massively invested in the Chabahar project, it was an open platform for all regional countries to participate in.

“While we are engaging with India on the economic front and India is investing in Chabahar, we have not given exclusive rights on the project to them,” he said.

Talking about the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, Kharazi said that Iran had “urged India a number of times to resolve the dispute in a peaceful and justly manner” and that Tehran was even willing to mediate between the two sides.

“But if we talk about economic partnerships, then Pakistan also has relations with the US which has put a number of sanctions on us, but (Iran) doesn’t mind it,” he said.

He pointed out that bilateral trade between Iran and Pakistan suffered over reluctance of Pakistani banks to do business with Iranian entities due to a fear of US sanctions.

Kharazi said that another issue that had negatively impacted the bilateral trade was the “lack of political will from Pakistani side due to intense pressure from Washington and middle-eastern countries”.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama got emotional on Saturday as he embraced one of the five Assam Rifles troopers, Naren Chandra Das, who escorted him in India after his escape from Tibet.

In 1959, as a young trooper Das, now 80, escorted the Dalai Lama, now 82, on his arrival in Arunachal Pradesh. Dalai Lama has lived in exile ever since fleeing Tibet in March 1959.

“I feel blessed once again as His Holiness touched me and bumped his head with my head,” Das told reporters after he was honoured by the leader at an event in Dharamsala to mark the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s arrival in India.

Das said he was overwhelmed by the gesture of His Holiness for inviting him. The event marked the onset of a year-long ‘Thank You India’ campaign.

Union Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma, Members of Parliament Shanta Kumar and Satyavrat Chaturvedi were also present in the event along with functionalities of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), comprising its President Lobsang Sangay.

In 2017, Das was reunited with the Dalai Lama for the first time in 58 years at a festival organised by the Assam government.

Das, who joined the force in 1957, said he was told to escort the Dalai Lama along with others. “We were directed only to escort the Dalai Lama and not to speak with him,” said Das.

He was then posted at Lungla near the China border after having completed his training at Tawang in the then North East Frontier Agency, now Arunachal Pradesh, he said.

The Dalai Lama has lived in India since fleeing China in 1959 after a failed uprising against Communist rule in Tibet.

The Dubai Public Prosecution has directed the Dubai Police to initiate criminal proceedings against five people, for spreading false information about Kalyan Jewellers.

All the five accused are of Indian origin and face charges of cyber crime and abuse using the internet or social media platform. The action was initiated based on a complaint filed by the company in November last year, following a series of posts online, that attacked the brand.

The action comes in the wake of several false social media posts that claimed that the gold sold by the jewellery brand was fake. One version of the post claimed that owners of Kalyan Jewellers in Dubai, was arrested for selling fake gold ornaments.

According to Kalyan Jewellers, one of the five people under the scanner, has during the course of the investigation, admitted that he had logged in and slandered the company.

Even as Dubai police started investigation on the complaint, recently, more fake posts were circulated on social media, especially on WhatsApp. A latest post that is being widely circulated along with an invoice of purchase accused the jeweller of mixing wax in huge proportion in antique jewellery.

Brands must take social media slandering seriously

Speaking to TNM, Ramesh Kalyanaraman, Executive Director of Kalyan Jewellers, said that the brand takes social media slandering seriously and was particular that they would respond through a legal channel.

“The first thing which we did when the social media attack started was to counter it on our own accounts and post the truth there. Then we complained to the police and we were waiting for the end result. Today, we have got a confirmation from the Dubai police,” he said.

Saying that when it comes to purchasing gold, customers are always concerned about what they buy, Ramesh said:

“Customers spend time in ensuring that the gold they purchase is pure. With regard to antique jewellery, people are well aware that a certain quantity of wax is used and this is mentioned in the invoice. But even so, when such a fake message questioning the purity of the jewellery is shared online, fear is created. That is not only going to affect the brand, but also the industry. That’s why we reacted fast in India,” he said.

Saying that it is extremely important for brands to clear the air as soon as possible when false information about the brand begins to circulate, Ramesh said, “Unfortunately, brands can clear the air only in their own official social media pages. But that does not get shared as much as a post meant to defame the brand. People should exercise caution when they receive these kind of posts,” he said.

Commenting on the development, Chairman and Managing Director of Kalyan Jewellers TS Kalyanaraman said:

“It is very reassuring to see the steps taken by the Dubai Police to contain social media abusers. Perpetrators should know that social media slandering will not be taken lightly. A brand’s reputation is built over years by the contribution and hard work of many people. Such instances of fake propaganda by a few irresponsible individuals, is an attempt to tarnish the

image and reputation of brands. These acts have deep impact on the emotions of all those associated with the brand and the company. I thank the UAE’s legal system and the Dubai Police for taking strict measures in preventing cybercrimes and establishing the truth in such situations.”