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Thousands of Venezuelans have staged a “silent” march in Venezuela’s capital Caracas and other cities to pay tribute to the 20 people who have been killed in political violence in the country in recent weeks. The protesters, dressed in white shirts, marched peacefully to the headquarters of Venezuela’s Catholic bishops’ confederation on the west end of Caracas on Saturday, carrying Venezuelan flags. The rally came amid weeks of turmoil and protests against the government of President Nicolas Maduro, whose failure to address the acute economic crisis in the country as well as to meet opposition demands has led to the upheaval in the Latin American country. “We’ve got nothing left to lose. The government has already taken everything, all possibility of living our lives with dignity,” said a 33-year-old protester attending the Saturday march. “The government has to back down. It has to listen to the people.” Similar demonstrations were also held in the other Venezuelan cities...

Several hundred demonstrators have poured out onto the streets of Istanbul to protest the outcome of last week’s disputed referendum in which voters narrowly approved expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s executive powers. Chanting anti-Erdogan slogans during Saturday’s march, the protesters vowed to stay on the streets until the referendum’s result is annulled. They carried banners reading, “No to one-man rule,” “Referendum should be annulled,” and "No. We won!" A demonstrator held up a cartoon of Erdogan reading, “They don’t let me be the president.” "There is hatred and anxiety around us. We are going in the direction opposite to one we should be going. I am trying to make myself heard as this is the only thing I can do," said protester Aysu Kaya. In the April 16 referendum, Erdogan's ‘Yes’ campaign won 51.36 percent of the votes, while the ‘No’ campaign gained 48.64 percent. Turkey's three largest cities – Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir – v...

People are voting in the presidential election in France, which is being closely watched worldwide because of its potentially far-reaching consequences. Nearly 47 million voters are voting under tight security to decide whether to back a pro-EU centrist newcomer, a scandal-ridden veteran conservative who wants to slash public spending, a far-left eurosceptic admirer of Fidel Castro, or a first woman president who would shut borders to refugees and ditch the euro. The outcome will be anxiously monitored around the world as a sign of whether the populist tide that saw Britain vote to leave the EU and Donald Trump’s election in the United States is still rising or starting to ebb. Emmanuel Macron, 39, a centrist ex-banker who set up his party just a year ago, is the opinion polls’ favorite to win the first round and beat far-right National Front chief Marine Le Pen in an anticipated run-off on May 7. For them to win the top two qualifying positions on Sunday would represent a...

Three Syrian forces have been killed in a fresh Israeli attack on a military camp near the southwestern city of Quneitra, a military official says. The attack hit the al-Fawwar camp on Sunday, wounding two others, the unnamed official told the French news agency AFP.  It was not clear whether the assault was an airstrike or shelling. The attack comes after Israel struck a Syrian army position in the province of Quneitra on the Golan plateau on Friday, "causing damage." A Syrian military source told the official SANA news agency that the Israeli aggression came after an attempt by terrorists to infiltrate military positions in Quneitra was foiled and the assailants suffered heavy losses. The Israeli military confirmed the raid in a statement, saying it was conducted shortly after three mortar shells allegedly fired from Syria hit an open area in the northern occupied Golan Heights. The Tel Aviv regime regularly hits positions held by the ...

US President Donald Trump’s approval rating has sunk to a record low after nearly 100 days in office standing at 42 percent, a new poll shows. The 100-day marker is in part an artificial measuring post for any president, but Trump is the least popular president at this stage of a presidency since Dwight Eisenhower who served as the 34th president of the US from 1953 to 1961. Trump’s first months in office have yielded some tangible successes with a small majority of Americans seeing him as a strong leader and a bigger majority approving of his efforts to pressurize US companies to keep jobs in this country. However, his balance sheet overall tilts toward the negative, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Sunday. A large majority of Americans believe the Republican president has not accomplished much during the first months after he took office in January, the poll says. In term of his temperament and honesty, Trump has shown very little improvement, a...

Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani has declared a national day of mourning over the killing of scores of soldiers in a Taliban attack. Ghani ordered that flags at a military base in Mazar-i-Sharif be flown at half mast on Sunday in memory of the troops who died there in a Taliban attack on Friday. The Afghan president arrived in Mazar-i-Sharif on Saturday to visit the base, the headquarters of the Afghan National Army’s 209th Corps, which is responsible for security in much of northern Afghanistan. About 10 Taliban militants, who were dressed in Afghan army uniforms and driving military vehicles, infiltrated into the base and opened fire on mostly unarmed soldiers eating and leaving a mosque after Friday prayers, according to officials. The militants used rocket-propelled grenades, rifles, and explosive vests in the fierce attack, which lasted for hours until special forces arrived. Ghani held an emergency meeting with senior security officials and called for a “seriou...

The Iran men's junior national basketball team has recorded its third consecutive victory at the 7th edition of the West Asia Basketball Association (WABA) Junior Championship. On Saturday evening, the Iranian juniors claimed a 94-53 win over Jordan in a match staged at Azadi Basketball Hall in western Tehran. The Iranian basketball players made a sound start and tallied enough points to claim the first quarter 27-20. The Iranians kept the dominance in the second quarter, scoring points to surge ahead. They eventually registered a sixteen-point lead and clinched the quarter 26-10. The Iranian side showed no sign of surrender as it entered the third quarter. The Persians mounted a string of attacks, and put the opposite side under a relentless spell of pressure to accumulate all the points. They ultimately closed the quarter at 15-11. In the final quarter, the Iranian team maintained superiority and could tak...

The chief of Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces says as many as 300,000 members of the service will be deployed to guarantee security during general elections next month.   Brigadier General Hossein Ashtari said the elections are “the most important political event” to take place in the country, adding his forces are directly responsible to thwart any possible threat.  “The country enjoys exemplary security,” but "the armed forces, police and the security apparatus should always assume that something is going to happen," he said. "We should pay attention to the regional and international developments, and maintain necessary readiness to confront any type of threat,” Ashtari added.  He touched on the activities of Takfiri and Salafi groups, saying "thanks to the readiness of the armed forces and the vigilance of the Eminent Leader of the Revolution (Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei), all plots have been foiled" so far. "We should maintain this re...

A report claims that thousands of Afghan refugees suspected to be former Taliban militants may have entered Germany over the past two years. German weekly news magazine  Der Spiegel  said in report on Saturday that authorities were verifying statements of thousands of Afghan refugees, who had come to the European country and identified themselves as former members of the Taliban militant group during the asylum application process. Citing Germany’s Federal Migration Office (BAMF), the magazine said criminal investigations had been launched in 70 cases and that six Afghan refugees were being held in investigatory detention. It added that preliminary court hearings involving several other Afghans were due to start next week. Meanwhile, the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office also cautioned that it was already “pushed to the limit” by the large number of counter-terrorism investigations it had to conduct, with the agency opening 200 criminal cases against suspected terr...

A senior Iranian official says certain regional countries seek to transfer terrorists from Syria and Iraq to Afghanistan. Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani made the remarks in a phone conversation with Hanif Atmar, national security adviser to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. The countries are after “destabilizing Afghanistan and weakening its security and law enforcement structure to prepare the ground to transfer the terrorists, who have been routed in Iraq and Syria, to the [Central Asian] country,” Shamkhani said. About 10 Taliban militants, dressed in Afghan army uniforms and driving military vehicles, infiltrated a military base in the northern Afghanistan Balkh Province on Friday, opening fire on mostly unarmed soldiers and killing scores of them. The Iranian official condemned the attack and condoled with the Afghan government and people, saying the Islamic Republic was prepared to deliver all sorts of assistance to those af...

North Korea has detained another US citizen, bringing to 3 the number of Americans held in the country amid increasing tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. The Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang Sunday confirmed the detainment of the US citizen but did not elaborate on the matter. However, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency, citing unnamed sources, reported on the same day that a Korean-American man had been arrested Friday at Pyongyang's international airport. According to the agency, the man in his fifties, identified only by his surname Kim, was trying to leave the country when North Korean police arrested him. Kim has been involved in aid and relief programs to North Korea and formerly worked as professor at the Yanbian University of Science and Technology in China, which has a sister university in Pyongyang. The report, however, was not confirmed by South Korea's Unification Ministry or its intelligence agency. North Korea has at least two other American...

Iranian male chess boxers have placed second at the first edition of Chess Boxing Amateur World Championships in India and clinched the vice champion title, thanks to their outstanding performances at the prestigious competition. Having struck two gold, one silver and one bronze medals, the Islamic Republic of Iran stood second in the tournament, the Martial Arts Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran reported on Saturday. The first edition of Chess Boxing Amateur World Championships started at Khudiram Anushilan Kendra sports hall in Kolkata, India, on April 12, and concluded on April 15, 2017. Chess boxing is a hybrid fighting sport that combines chess and boxing. The contests take on each other in alternating rounds of the cerebral board game and physical sport. Dutch performance artist Iepe B. T. Rubingh is the founder of the sport. Chess boxing was initially an art performance but quickly turned into a fully developed competitive sport....

Iran says it expects France’s Total to finalize an agreement over the development of a key natural gas project in the country’s south in less than a month.  Amirhossein Zamaniniya, Iran’s deputy petroleum minister for international affairs and trading, was quoted by domestic media as saying that Total had been waiting to see whether there would be any “positive developments” in Washington toward the renewal of sanctions against Iran before proceeding with the development of South Pars Phase 11. “Those developments took place and Total will continue negotiating with Iran toward a final agreement over the project,” Zamaniniya told Iran’s ISNA news agency. “This will depend on how prepared Iran would be and how long it would take to write the text of the deal. I don’t think it would take longer than a month.”   Last November, Total signed a basic agreement, worth $4.8 billion to develop South Pars Phase 11 in cooperation with China’s CNPC and Iran’s Petropars. ...

Pope Francis has likened the detention camps set up by European states to hold refugees to concentration camps. “Refugee camps, many of them, are of concentration [conditions] because of the great number of people left there, inside them,” the leader of the Roman Catholic Church said during a sermon at the Basilica of Saint Bartholomew in Rome on Saturday. He reprimanded the European states for exercising collective apathy toward the plight of the refugees by sealing the continent’s borders, and advised European leaders to uphold and defend human and refugee rights. The Pope encouraged European leaders to welcome more refugees rather than devise new means of how to stem their flow. In March, the Pope said Europe had been founded on the basis of multiculturalism. “Europe finds new hope when she refuses to yield to fear or close herself off in false forms of security. Quite the contrary, her history has been greatly determined by encounters with other pe...

The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) will air live the draw for broadcasting both recorded and live programs of presidential candidates on Sunday, with candidates having already launched their campaigns. The IRIB public relations office said representatives of the candidates will attend the ceremony at 10:00 p.m. local time (0530 GMT). Radio Iran as well as IRIB TV1 and the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN) channels will broadcast the event. On Saturday, the Election Campaign Monitoring Committee revised an earlier decision not to broadcast live presidential debates after criticism from candidates and many Iranians. Iran’s Interior Ministry spokesman Seyyed Salman Samani said the decision was rescinded after members of the panel agreed by consensus to give live air time to the candidates to discuss their election plans.  Read more: Iran presidential debates 'enlivened' First debate on Frid...

Some 3,000 refugees and asylum seekers have reportedly been rescued from unseaworthy boats off the Libyan coast during a second day of operations in the Mediterranean Sea. The Italian coastguard made the announcement on Saturday, saying that the refugees had been pulled to safety during 35 rescue operations launched in the day. It said another 15 operations would be underway before nightfall. An official with the German NGO Jugend Rettet, which participated in the operations, said a further 1,000 people remained to be rescued from inflatable dinghies as rescue ships had reached capacity. She added that the number of incoming refugees was expected to rise owing to the fine spring weather. Reports said most of the refugees were from sub-Saharan Africa, fleeing poverty and starvation there. A day earlier, the Italian coastguard had carried out 19 rescue operations aided by NGOs, including the medical charity Doctors without Borders. A total of 2,074 refugees aboard 16 rub...

The Gaza Strip of about 2 million Palestinians is to face a severe energy crisis starting from Sunday as the besieged enclave's sole power plant is about to shut down amid a lack of funds to buy fuel.   The plant's closure could shut down the Gaza desalination plant, which produces clean and potable water in the territory where some 96% of water is undrinkable. Gaza authorities depend on outside donations to operate the facility. A similar crisis threatened the power plant during the winter, but fuel and funds provided by Turkey and Qatar prevented it. Demand for power in Gaza is about 450 to 500 megawatts per day, but it often gets less than half of that, where about 27 megawatts is imported from Egypt and 125 megawatts from Israel.  Even at the best of circumstances, Gaza residents are supplied with electricity intermittently, receiving power on alternating cycles of eight hours a day.  Israel has been blockading the enclave ...

Iran has indicated its support for extending a crucial oil output agreement by world’s biggest producers that helped stabilize prices in markets since its implementation early this year.  Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh was quoted by the media as saying that most oil producers support an extension of the agreement which was devised by Saudi Arabia last year.    In December 2016, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reached a landmark agreement with Russia and other non-members to proceed with the plan and slash oil production by nearly 1.8 million barrels a day for six months starting January 2017. The agreement exempted key member Iran from the plan, allowing it to increase its production by 90,000 bpd to reach pre-sanction levels of around 4 million bpd. Nigeria and Libya were also exempted from the planned output cut due to internal conflicts which have already decreased their crude production. Zanganeh, in a press conference t...

A senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has denounced the pro-Israeli policy adopted by the administration of US President Donald Trump, saying the White House is now inhabited by Israeli settlers. Hanan Ashrawi, a PLO executive committee member, said on Saturday that Israel’s far-right stance dominates the US government. “We used to say there were settlers in the Israeli coalition borne of the far right that detests Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. But today we say there are settlers inside the White House,” she said. Trump’s administration “has adopted the extreme Israeli position to the right of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and which supports the settlements,” she added. The remarks came amid reports that a delegation of Palestinian Authority officials will visit Washington later this month, in preparation for a meeting between Trump and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “The main goal here is to reach understandings t...

Two people have been killed and another injured in a shooting in rural Plant City, Florida, police say. Following a family meeting on Saturday which turned violent, two brothers, identified as Perry Varn, 66, and Milton Varn, 62, were shot dead. A third person, who was not identified, was shot and injured and later hospitalized in unknown condition. There was a fourth individual at the scene that was not injured. "There was a meeting between some of the family members, then another one of them arrived and then the dispute occurred," said Col. Donna Lusczynski of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. “We do know there were numerous firearms involved and at least two individuals who shot those firearms," Lusczynski said. Police described the incident as a domestic-related dispute over a piece of land, but did not provide further information. "We've been out for several calls there at the location. There are several residences there and we...