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US President Donald Trump announced that the American army began a major combat operation inside Iran earlier today, saying the move comes in response to what he described as Tehran’s attempts to rebuild its nuclear program and develop long-range missile capabilities that threaten the United States and other countries.In a recorded video published on the platform Truth Social, Trump said Iran had sought to reconstruct its nuclear program, calling it a violation of international understandings and a dangerous escalation in the region.He added that Tehran is working to develop long-range missiles capable of threatening US national security and Washington’s allies.President Trump stressed that the primary objective of the operation is to ensure that Tehran cannot develop or acquire a nuclear weapon in the future.The US president’s remarks came after Israel announced earlier in the day that it had begun launching an attack against Iran. Source link
Agency still has not visited most sensitive bombed sitesLarge stock of uranium near weapons-grade unaccounted forSome of it was underground at Isfahan tunnel complexIAEA increasingly concerned about newest plant at Isfahan. The UN nuclear watchdog issued a confidential report yesterday urging Iran to let it inspect all its nuclear sites and pointing at Isfahan as a place of interest because of a new enrichment plant and near-bomb-grade uranium that was stored there. The report was sent to members of the International Atomic Energy Agency ahead of a quarterly meeting next week of its 35-country board, amid nuclear talks between the US and Iran, the latest round of which was held on Thursday with no breakthrough. Like previous IAEA reports, it could be used by Washington to support its argument that Tehran has not been transparent about its nuclear activities, at a time when US President Donald Trump has massed forces in the region and threatened new military action. The US and Israel bombed Iranian nuclear sites last June, and Iran has since refused to show what happened to its stockpile of highly enriched uranium or allow IAEA inspectors access to sites where enrichment took place.“While the Agency acknowledged that the military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities had created an unprecedented situation, it is critical for it to conduct verification activities in Iran without any further delay,” the report seen by Reuters said. INDISPENSABLE AND URGENTAllowing inspections was “indispensable and urgent”, it said. It also said a successful outcome in the US-Iranian negotiations would have a “positive impact on the effective implementation of safeguards in Iran and the resolution of issues described in this report”. The IAEA estimates that Iran had 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to up to 60% before last year’s Israeli-U.S. attacks — enough, if enriched further, for 10 nuclear weapons, according to an IAEA yardstick. The agency andWestern powers believe the bulk of that is still intact. Washington wants Tehran to give it up. The report provided new details about activity at Isfahan, where diplomats have said much of the Islamic Republic’s most highly enriched uranium has been stored in a tunnel complex that appears to have averted destruction last June. For the first time, the report confirmed that material enriched to up to 20% and 60% had been kept there. In satellite imagery, the IAEA had observed “regular vehicular activity around the entrance to the tunnel complex at Isfahan in which (uranium) enriched up to 20% and 60% U-235… was stored,” it said. The US-Israeli attacks are believed to have destroyed or badly damaged the three uranium enrichment sites known to have been operating at the time. Shortly before Israel launched its attack, Iran said it was setting up a fourth enrichment plant in Isfahan, though the IAEA still does not know its precise location or whether it is operational, the report said.“It is a matter of increasing concern that Iran has never provided the Agency with access to its fourth declared enrichment facility since it was first declared by Iran in June last year,” the report said. Source link
Members of the media gather outside the Chappaqua Performing Arts Centre as the House Oversight Committee conducts a deposition with former US president Bill Clinton as…
OpenAI said on Thursday that it will set up a direct point of contact with Canadian law enforcement and improve detection of repeat violators of its “violent activities” policy to boost safety protocols in the wake of a recent school shooting. The ChatGPT maker detailed the steps in a letter to Canada’s minister in charge of artificial intelligence (AI), Evan Solomon. Ann O’Leary, OpenAI’s vice-president of global policy, wrote the letter after Canadian ministers this week urged the ChatGPT maker to boost its safety protocols quickly and warned that Ottawa would effect change through legislation if the company did not. “We remain committed to co-operating with law enforcement authorities on the investigation into the Tumbler Ridge tragedy, and we are committed to an ongoing partnership with federal and provincial governments,” O’Leary said, referring to the town in British Columbia where the shooting occurred.Ottawa summoned OpenAI’s safety team for talks this week after the company said it had not contacted police about an account belonging to the alleged shooter, Jesse Van Rootselaar, that it had banned. Van Rootselaar, 18, is suspected of killing eight people on February 10 before taking her own life in Tumbler Ridge.She killed her mother and brother at the family home before heading to the local secondary school, where she shot dead five children and a teacher. OpenAI said it banned her ChatGPT account last year for policy violations. The company said the account was flagged by systems that identify “misuses of our models in furtherance of violent activities” but did not provide further details.OpenAI said the issues did not meet its internal criteria for reporting to law enforcement. O’Leary said on Thursday that under the company’s “enhanced law enforcement referral protocol”, it would have referred the initial account ban in June to police if it were discovered now.She also said the company had discovered that Van Rootselaar had used a second account, which it shared with law enforcement. “We commit to strengthening our detection systems to better prevent attempts to evade our safeguards and prioritize identifying the highest-risk offenders,” O’Leary said. The company also committed to periodically assessing the thresholds used by its automated systems for identifying potential violent activities by users. Crime experts have noted that while greater scrutiny of AI platforms and social media is necessary, police or other authorities may have missed additional chances to avert one of Canada’s worst mass killings. Police said Van Rootselaar had a history of mental health problems and that they had removed and later returned guns from her home. Minister Solomon’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Source link
People sit in a cafe in the GUM department store, which is a popular destination for tourists from Arabic-speaking countries, in Moscow, Russia. In sub-zero temperatures outside Moscow, teams of husky dogs pull tourists from Oman and the United Arab Emirates across picturesque snow-covered fields in sleds, delighting their passengers who have never experienced a Russian winter before. Nearby, a couple from Qatar feed a small herd of deer and other tourists from the Middle East drive a hovercraft at high speed across a snowy lake. “It was like drifting in the desert but here on ice,” said Badreya Almarooqi, a tourist from the UAE at the Nazarievo Husky Park — 45km west of central Moscow — where signs are written in Arabic as well as Russian. North of the city, another group of Gulf tourists crowd into a hot air balloon to drift over a vast snowy landscape. “(It was) one of the best activities in my life!” said Ayoub Aziz, a tourist from Saudi Arabia drawn to the experience in the Dmitrov district 65km from the city centre, one of many such activity destinations dotted around the capital. Four years into Russia’s war in Ukraine, Moscow’s pivot away from the West and its quest to draw nearer to other parts of the world has produced an Arabic-speaking tourism boom. There are more direct flights between Moscow and key Gulf capitals, new visa-free regimes and closer diplomatic ties due to the roles of Gulf states in brokering prisoner exchanges or the handover of children to Ukraine. With more than 800,000 visits last year, tourists from China, long a close Russian partner, lead official figures by a long way. But Saudi Arabia secured the number two slot for the first time last year with nearly 75,000 tourists, a year-on-year increase of nearly 36%, while more than 59,000 tourists came from the UAE, putting it in sixth place. “Virtually all Arab countries have at least doubled their numbers, said Alexander Musikhin, general director of the Intourist tour operator. “But there are also destinations like Saudi Arabia, which has increased its arrivals in Russia — and in Moscow in particular — by almost 15 times compared with the pre-pandemic period,” he said. Visitors from the Gulf stay in high-end hotels in the centre of the capital and are a common sight in upmarket Russia-themed restaurants and well-known shopping streets or malls. They often spend at least 200,000-300,000 roubles ($6,523) on extra services, tour operators say, and would spend more if the rules did not limit them to bringing in $10,000 in cash without a declaration. Western sanctions mean Visa and Mastercard do not work in Russia, “so it has to be in cash”, UAE tourist Rashan Godani said. Despite its war with Ukraine, Russia welcomed a total of 1.64mn tourists in 2025 according to the country’s association of tour operators, 4.5% up on 2024, but sharply down on 2018, the year Russia held the World Cup when 4.2mn foreign tourists visited. By contrast, 2.45mn Russians visited the UAE alone last year, up by nearly a quarter year-on-year, and some Russian businessmen have opened up offices in Dubai. Musikhin, the Intourist head, said fallout from the conflict was limiting growth. He cited the periodic and temporary closure of Russian airports due to Ukrainian drone attacks and the longer time it takes tourists to cross the border due to heightened security checks.“Tourists are generally understanding about this,” he said. Source link
Visually impaired students read the Holy Qur’an in Braille during the holy fasting month of Ramadan at a school in Surabaya, Indonesia's East Java province, yesterday. Source link
This handout photo taken on February 26, 2026 and released yesterday by the Armed Forces of the Philippines-Public Affairs Office shows a Philippine air force FA-50…
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in India yesterday for a visit he hopes will reset ties and double trade, offsetting the damage from his country’s fracturing relations with the United States.Carney’s visit is a key step forward in ties that effectively collapsed in 2023 after Ottawa accused New Delhi of orchestrating a deadly campaign against Sikh activists in Canada.He arrived in the financial hub of Mumbai, where he is expected to address business leaders before travelling to the capital and meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, the final day of his visit.Indian broadcasters showed a police convoy as Carney was whisked through Mumbai.India’s foreign ministry said Carney’s visit marked a “significant step in further strengthening India-Canada ties”.”The India-Canada partnership is anchored in shared democratic values, strong people-to-people ties, and expanding co-operation across diverse sectors,” ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said in a post on X.Carney’s office said discussions would focus on “ambitious new partnerships in trade, energy, technology and artificial intelligence (AI), talent and culture, and defence”.Last year, the two countries agreed to resume negotiations on a proposed free-trade agreement.Carney has said he wanted to more than double two-way trade with India by 2030, eyeing an annual target of $51 billion.Before Carney took office last year, Ottawa accused Modi’s government of direct involvement in the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a naturalised Canadian citizen who was part of a fringe group that advocated for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan.Khalistan militants have been blamed for the assassination of an Indian prime minister and the bombing of a passenger jet.Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government further alleged India had directed a campaign of intimidation against Sikh activists across Canada.India has repeatedly dismissed the allegations, which sent diplomatic relations into freefall, with both nations expelling a string of top diplomats in 2024.Ties improved after Carney took office in March 2025, and envoys have since been restored.Asked whether Canadian concerns about transnational repression would feature at the New Delhi talks, Foreign Minister Anita Anand told reporters: “That is always at the forefront of our minds.”India, the world’s fastest-growing major economy, is seeking to attract more overseas investments, and says Canadian pension and wealth funds have already invested $73 billion.Energy-hungry India – the world’s most populous country with 1.4 billion people – hopes Canada can support its ambitious plan to expand nuclear power capacity.After India, Carney will travel on to Australia and Japan, part of a broad effort to pivot the Canadian economy away from excessive reliance on its southern neighbour, the United States.In 2024, before US President Donald Trump returned to office and upended global trade through a flurry of tariffs, more than 75 percent of Canadian exports went to the United States. Two-way trade that year exceeded $900 billion.So far Trump broadly adhered to the North American free trade agreement he signed during his first term, and about 85 percent of US-Canada trade remains tariff-free.But at the same time, Trump has also imposed painful industry-specific tariffs, and there are fears that if he scraps the broader trade deal, the Canadian economy will be hit hard.Carney has made boosting commerce with Europe and Asia cornerstones of his strategy to backstop Canada’s economy, should free trade with Washington collapse.Carney’s hopes for trade growth with Australia and Japan are more modest, but his office said co-operation over critical mineral supply chains will be a priority.Advanced economies have made a push to deepen critical mineral co-operation, especially in the processing of rare earth elements essential to power many high-tech products.China currently has dominant control of rare earth supply chains, a concern that Canada highlighted throughout its just-concluded G7 presidency. Source link
Kashmiri Muslim men offer prayers on the second Friday of the holy fasting month of Ramadan along a street in Srinagar, Indian Kashmir, February 27, 2026. Source link
Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Badr Abdelatty, held a telephone conversation with Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, to discuss the latest developments regarding border clashes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. In a statement on Friday, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that Abdelatty called for calm and restraint to help lower tensions and spare the region further instability. The statement added that Egypt expressed its “deep concern” over the escalating border tensions and clashes, which have resulted in a number of casualties. Egypt urged all parties involved to exercise the utmost levels of self-restraint. The ministry underscored the importance of exhausting all possible diplomatic avenues to achieve a truce and defuse the crisis, preventing the region from sliding into further escalation. It further emphasized the necessity of prioritizing political and diplomatic solutions to settle disputes in a manner that preserves regional security and stability. Source link