US President Donald Trump has signed new sanctions targeting the Iranian-funded militant group and political party Hezbollah, which is considered a terrorist organisation by Washington.

“Over the past year we have levied the highest sanctions ever imposed on Hezbollah — in a single year, by far. Just a few moments ago, I signed legislation imposing even more hard-hitting sanctions on Hezbollah to further starve them of their funds. And they are starving for them,” Trump said during an event on Thursday marking the 35th anniversary of the attack on US Marine barracks in Beirut.

The legislation, known as the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act, was sponsored by Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, reports CNN.

The bill ramps up reporting requirements and places further financial and economic sanctions on the group.

“We will target, disrupt and dismantle their operational and financing efforts, of which they have plenty and we will never forget what they did to our Marines in Beirut,” the President added.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the sanctions “will further isolate Hezbollah from the international financial system and reduce its funding”.

“These sanctions will target foreign persons and government agencies that knowingly assist or support Hezbollah, and Hezbollah-affiliated networks that engage in drug trafficking or other transnational crime,” she added.

IANS

A Japanese freelance journalist held hostage by Islamist militants for 40 months in Syria left for Japan from Turkey on Thursday after being freed and said he was happy to be going home.

Jumpei Yasuda, who went missing in Syria where he went to cover the civil war and was confirmed safe by the Japanese government on Wednesday, is scheduled to arrive in Tokyo later on Thursday, reports Xinhua news agency.

“I am happy that I can return to Japan. At the same time, I don’t know what will happen from here or what I should do. I am thinking about what I need to do,” Yasuda, 44, said before boarding his flight home from the southern Turkish city of Antalya.

He said that his time held captive was hell both physically and psychologically.

He said the thought of not being freed day after day led him to lose control of himself, and living in a cell had become normal for him, although paradoxically was a painful reality.

As for his release, Yasuda told Japanese public broadcaster NHK that he was taken by car and handed over to Turkish officials at the border and taken to immigration.

On Wednesday, the Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono confirmed that a man released by Syrian militants was indeed Yasuda.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said late Tuesday that the Qatari government had notified Japan that Yasuda had been released.

Suga denied on Wednesday that Japan had secured Yasuda’s release by paying a ransom despite some organisations’ claims to the contrary.

Yasuda was initially believed to have been captured and held by an Al Qaeda-linked group.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe also thanked the leaders of Turkey and Qatar for their part in helping secure Yasuda’s release.

Ians

The Pakistani authorities detained 16 Indian fishermen on Tuesday for alleged violation of the country’s maritime boundary, security officials said.

The Maritime Security Agency (MSA) said that three boats of the fishermen were also seized during the operation in open sea for violating the Pakistan’s coastal territory.

The arrested fishermen were handed over to police for legal proceedings, Xinhua reported.

Pakistan and India routinely arrest fishermen on charges of entering each other’s waters as the maritime boundaries between the two countries were poorly defined and many fishing boats lack technologies on locating their precise places.

The US Treasury announced on Tuesday that it has imposed sanctions on eight individuals, including two associated with Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — Qods Force (IRGC-QF), in an effort to hit Afghanistan’s Taliban militants.

The Treasury accused the designated Taliban members of engaging in suicide attacks and other activities in Afghanistan and blamed the Iranians for providing financial and material support for the Taliban, Xinhau reported.

USTreasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin claimed in a statement that Iran was “exploiting Afghanistan to further their destabilizing behaviour”.

Mnuchin is on a week-long trip to the Middle East with talks on combating terrorist financing and looming Iran sanctions.

Also on Tuesday, the other member nations of the Terrorist Financing Targeting Centre (TFTC), all US Gulf allies, also imposed Taliban-related sanctions.

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain announced Tuesday to add Iran’s IRGC to the list of terror-related individuals and organisations, Saudi Press Agency reported.

Washington has intensified its sanctions against Iranian entities and individuals after President Donald Trump’s decision to exit the Iran nuclear deal in May, a move that has been widely criticized by the international community.

New US sanctions on Iran’s oil exports are set to kick in on November 4.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said his country will manage to abort anti-Iran sanctions by the United States, Press TV reported on Monday.

The TFTC, including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, was formed in May 2017 and inaugurated by the Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Trump on the sidelines of the Arab-Islamic-American Summit last year.

IANS

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday officially opened the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge that connects mainland China with Hong Kong and Macau, during a ceremony in the city of Zhuhai.

The $20 billion mega-project includes with a 55 km road bridge that has been in the works for almost nine years, CNN reported.

It’s a key element of China’s plan for a Greater Bay Area covering 56,500 sq.km of southern China, and encompassing 11 cities, including Hong Kong and Macau, that are home to a combined 68 million people.

Proponents of the bridge have said that it will significantly cut journey times between the cities, enabling commuters and tourists to easily move around the region.

However, private car owners in Hong Kong will not be able to cross the bridge without a special permit.

Most drivers will have to park at the Hong Kong port, switching to a shuttle bus or special hire cars once they are through immigration.

Shuttle buses will cost between $8 to $10 for a single trip depending on the time of day.

Built to withstand a magnitude 8 earthquake, a super typhoon and strikes by super-sized cargo vessels, the bridge incorporates 400,000 tonnes of steel — 4.5 times the amount in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, CNN said.

It also includes a 6.7 km submerged tunnel to help it avoid the busy shipping paths over the Pearl River Delta.

The tunnel runs between two artificial islands, each measuring 100,000 sq.metres and situated in relatively shallow waters.

IANS

Authorities in Nigeria have deployed special police forces to northern Kaduna and declared a 24-hour curfew in the state’s capital following communal violence that killed dozens of people.

President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the deployment on Sunday, as the regional government imposed the measure in Kaduna city after violence broke out on its streets.

The clashes followed violence that broke out on Thursday between Muslim and Christian communities in the Kasuwan Magani area of southern Kaduna which left at least 55 people dead.

“The violence in Kaduna … is condemnable. The police have been authorised to do everything possible to restore calm. A Special Intervention Force has been deployed to the flashpoints,” Buhari said on Twitter.

“The federal government and its law enforcement agencies will work with the state government and community leaders to ensure the full restoration of peace and security,” Buhari said in another message.

Local people, who described unrest in both Christian and Muslim areas of the state capital, said troops were also seen on the city’s streets.

A spokesperson for Governor Nasir El-Rufai, in a statement on Facebook, appealed to the city’s residents to “do their best to uphold the peace”.

Ahmad Abdur-Rahman, the state police commissioner, told reporters on Friday that 22 people had been arrested in connection with the clashes.

Kaduna was plunged into communal violence after fighting erupted between Hausa Muslim and Adara Christian youths in Kasuwan Magani’s market following a dispute among wheelbarrow porters.

Two people were said to have been killed in the initial market fracas on Thursday.

The violence then dramatically escalated when Adara youths later attacked Hausa residents, burning homes and killing dozens.

“Most of the killings were done in the second attack which took the Hausa community off guard,” Muhammadu Bala, a Kasuwan Magani resident who lost his home, told AFP news agency over the weekend.

Kaduna state is where Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north meets the predominantly Christian south and has seen previous bouts of communal violence.

In February, clashes left at least 10 people dead and hundreds of homes and businesses burned. Major bouts of sectarian rioting in 2000 and 2002 killed thousands.

Last year, troops and additional police officers were deployed to the state in response to an outbreak of violence.

Aljazeera

India on Monday described as “deeply regrettable” Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remarks on Twitter in which he condemned “the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris” in Jammu and Kahsmir.

“The remarks made by Pakistan’s Prime Minister in his tweet today (Monday) are deeply regrettable,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in response to queries from the media.

“Instead of making comments on India’s internal affairs, Pakistan leadership should look inwards and address its own issues,” Kumar said.

“Pakistan would serve the interest of the people of the region by taking credible action against all kind of support to terrorism and terror infrastructure from all territories under its control rather than supporting and glorifying terrorists and terror activities against India and its other neighbours.”

Kumar also said Pakistan’s “deceitful stand on dialogue, while supporting terror and violence, stands exposed to the whole world”.

Khan in a tweet earlier in the day said: “Strongly condemn the new cycle of killings of innocent Kashmiris… by Indian security forces. It is time India realise it must move to resolve the Kashmir dispute through dialogue in accordance with the United Nations Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.”

His remarks came after seven civilians were killed in an explosion in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district on Sunday shortly after a gunfight that had left three militants dead.

Lima Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie, visiting Peru in her capacity as special envoy of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), has met with Venezuelan migrants at a shelter in Lima run by volunteers.

It was her first official activity on Monday as the filmmaker launched her three-day mission to evaluate the needs of the Venezuelan refugees “and observe Peru’s generous response,” the UN High Commissioner of Refugees said in a statement.

Jolie went to working-class San Juan de Lurigancho neighbourhood here to visit the Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) shelter, which opened more than a year ago to provide lodging and food for Venezuelans fleeing economic crisis in their homeland, Efe news reported.

Videos posted on social media showed Jolie chatting with the migrants.

Peru has received 4,56,000 Venezuelans in the past 18 months, second only to Colombia.

(IANS)

Pakistan has reopened the friendship gate at the Afghan border in Chaman, resuming trade activities, Nato supplies and transit trade between the two countries, the media reported on Monday.

Pakistan had closed the border at Chaman and Torkham on Friday in connection with parliamentary elections in Afghanistan that had suspended trade activities in the border town Chaman and Spin Boldak, reports Dawn news.

Hundreds of trucks carrying Nato supplies and transit trade goods crossed into Afghanistan after reopening of the border on Sunday.

Pakistan had closed the border soon after the Kandahar Police chief, the governor and intelligence chief of Kandahar and a cameraman were killed in the firing in the Governor House.

IANS

The UN’s drug strategy of the past 10 years has been a failure, according to a report by the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC), which has called for a major rethinking of global policy on illegal narcotics.

The report released on Sunday claimed that UN efforts to eliminate the illegal drug market by 2019 through a “war on drugs” approach has had scant effect on global supply while having negative effects on health, human rights, security and development, CNN reported.

According to the report, drug-related deaths have increased by 145 per cent over the last decade, with more than 71,000 overdose deaths in the US in 2017 alone.

At least 3,940 people were executed for drug offenses around the world over the last 10 years, while drug crackdowns in the Philippines resulted in around 27,000 extrajudicial killings.

The IDPC, a network of 177 national and international NGOs concerned with drug policy and drug abuse, is urging the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs to consider a different approach to narcotics strategy for the next 10 years in the run-up to a March 2019 summit in Vienna, Austria.

“This report is another nail in the coffin for the war on drugs,” said Ann Fordham, the Executive Director of IDPC, in a statement.

“The fact that governments and the UN do not see fit to properly evaluate the disastrous impact of the last ten years of drug policy is depressingly unsurprising.”

The UN was not immediately available for comment on the report, reports CNN.

In 2017, Mexico, for example, recorded its most murderous year on record due to soaring levels of drug-related violence.

As previously reported by CNN, the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography revealed that there were 31,174 homicides over the course of the year — an increase of 27 per cent over 2016.

IANS