President Rouhani says Iran in 'economic fight' with US

Agencies
June 26, 2018

Tehran, Jun 26: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani today said his country is in a "fight" with the US, a day after protesters angered by Iran's tanking economy confronted police in front of parliament.

In a televised speech, Rouhani blamed the US for Iran's woes and said the US is trying to damage the country by creating "an economic war." 

"The US cannot defeat our nation, our enemies are not able to get us to their knees," he said.

Rouhani's comments came after protesters angered by Iran's tanking economy confronted police in front of parliament yesterday. It was the first such confrontation since similar demonstrations rocked the country at the start of the year.

The demonstration signalled widespread unease in the wake of President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw the US from Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers and restore sanctions on the country.

It wasn't immediately clear who led yesterday's protests. Iran's semi-official news agencies, Fars, ISNA and Tasnim, described the protests at the Grand Bazaar as erupting after the Iranian rial dropped to 90,000 to the dollar on the country's black market, despite government attempts to control the currency rate.

Videos posted to social media showed protesters at the bazaar heckling shopkeepers who refused to close.

A short time later, about 2 kilometres from the Grand Bazaar, videos shared by Iranians on social media appeared to show a crowd confronting police at parliament.

Iran's semi-official ISNA news agency reported today that authorities detained many of the rioters.

Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said the "main provocateurs" who planned the protest and threatened shopkeepers to close their stores were arrested. He did not elaborate on the number of people detained.

Still, semi-official ISNA news agency reported the country's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, said today that the Rouhani administration hasn't done enough to confront the economic problems.

At the end of last year, similar economic protests roiled Iran and spread to some 75 cities and towns, becoming the largest demonstrations in the country since its 2009 disputed presidential election. The protests in late December and early January saw at least 25 people killed and nearly 5,000 arrested.

Iran has announced a list of 15 demands for improving relations with the United States, including a US return to the 2015 nuclear accord, in response to a similar list of demands made by Washington last month.

In May, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for a wholesale change in Iran's military and regional policies, threatening the "strongest sanctions in history" if it refused. The US withdrew from the landmark nuclear agreement with world powers earlier that month.

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News Network
June 13,2020

Mexico City, Jun 13: The number of people, who have died of COVID-19 in Mexico, has risen by 544 to 16,448 within the past 24 hours, Jose Luis Alomia, the director of epidemiology at the Health Ministry, said.

He also said on late Friday that the number of confirmed coronavirus cases had increased by 5,222 to 139,196 within the same period of time.

A day earlier, the Latin American nation has recorded 4,790 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, with 587 fatalities.

The World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic on March 11. To date, more than 7.6 million people have been infected with the coronavirus worldwide, with over 425,000 fatalities, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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News Network
June 25,2020

Ottawa, Jun 25: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took his son out for ice cream on Wednesday in his first family outing since Canada started easing out of its pandemic lockdown.

It was also Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in Quebec province.

Wearing masks, the Canadian leader and his six-year-old son Hadrien were cheered at Chocolats Favoris in Gatineau, Quebec.

According to a pool report, Trudeau said the shop tapped into a federal emergency wage subsidy and business loan in order to weather the pandemic, and "avoid being frozen out of the frozen treat market."

Hadrien is said to have bounced with excitement, settling on a vanilla cone with a cookie topping while dad bought a vanilla cone dipped in chocolate for himself.

Father and son then headed out to the patio, where they doffed their masks to eat their cones.

Canada's provinces and territories declared states of emergency mid-March, closing schools and non-essential businesses in response to the pandemic.

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News Network
March 2,2020

New Delhi, Mar 2: Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Sunday hit out at Union Home Minister Amit Shah for his comments that no one from the minority community will be affected by amended Citizenship Act and asked why then was the community excluded from the law in the first place.

Addressing a rally in Kolkata, Shah assured people of the minority community that not a single person will lose citizenship due to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).

"The Home Minister says that no minority will be affected by CAA. If this is correct, they should tell the country who would be affected by CAA. If no one would be affected by CAA, as it currently is, why did the government pass the law?

"If the CAA aims to benefit all minorities (no one will be affected, says HM), then why are Muslims excluded from the list of minorities mentioned in the Act?," the former finance minister asked in a post on Twitter.

At his first public rally in Kolkata after the 2019 general elections, Shah said, "The opposition is terrorising the minorities. I assure every person from the minority community that the CAA only provides citizenship, does not take it away. It won't affect your citizenship."

"The opposition parties are spreading canards that refugees will have to show papers but this is absolutely false. You don't have to show any paper. We will not stop until all refugees are granted citizenship," Shah told the public.

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