ANKARA: Turkey convinced its NATO allies to opt for a milder official stance after Belarus forced down a European airliner passing through the country’s airspace so it could arrest a dissident journalist, Reuters reported on Thursday. The Ryanair passenger plane was flying from Greece and bound for Lithuania, however Belarus diverted its route to force it to land in Minsk on
Drawing on his rapport with the Polish president and a landmark drone deal with Warsaw, Erdogan seems to be aiming at two goals strengthening his hand in NATO and having a close ally within the European Union.
Posted on May 12, 2021.
U.S.-Turkey relations are in such terrible shape that the president’s statement is just another brick in the structure that is already collapsing. “There hasn’t been a better time for a statement like this,” Karol Wasilewski from the Polish Institute of International Affairs tells Onet, commenting on Joe Biden’s move. According to Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zalewski, chaplain of the Armenian community of Poland, it is a “huge, positive surprise.”
On Saturday, Biden called the slaughter of Armenians a genocide. The U.S. president wrote this in a statement issued on the day of commemoration of the crime. The announcement speaks of 1.5 million Armenians “deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in a campaign of extermination.”
Internet will stop if fuel is unavailable, warns telecoms minister
Updated 08 June 2021
June 08, 2021 01:25
BEIRUT: Lebanese President Michel Aoun has approved an exceptional loan of up to LBP300 billion ($197 million) for the state electricity company to import fuel before supplies run out, according to an official statement.
His approval came days before the country was due to experience a total power blackout.
The hours for electricity rationing in various regions reached minimum levels on Monday morning, with supply to some areas no longer exceeding half an hour a day, and there were increased protests from people after generator owners hiked their service tariffs so that bills became more than LBP700,000 a month, whereas the minimum wage is LBP675,000 a month.