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China has punished 8,123 people for committing fiscal violations after an audit of how the government's 2016 central budget was spent revealed multiple problems, the Xinhua state news agency reported. Hu Zejun, head of the National Audit Office, announced the infringements while briefing lawmakers on Saturday, Xinhua said. A broad anti-graft campaign in China, aimed at rooting out deep-seated corruption in the ruling Communist Party, including the misuse or embezzlement of government funds, has ensnared more than 1.3 million officials. Hu said that of the offenders, 970 were punished for misusing funds earmarked for a poverty relief campaign intended to lift everyone in rural areas out of poverty by 2020. Another 1,363 were punished for irregularities in the use of funds meant to provide affordable housing, she said. She said 800 people in state-owned enterprises and 73 people in eight major banks were found to have committed violations, along with 505 people who...

Junior Iranian boxer Mobin Abbasi has refused to take on his Israeli opponent at the 2017 edition of the Agalarov Cup Youth Boxing Tournament in Azerbaijan. On Friday, Abbasi did not show up for a scheduled encounter against a representative from Israel in the first round of men’s 52-kilogram weight class, and was subsequently excluded from the rest of the tournament. The Islamic Republic of Iran refuses to recognize the Tel Aviv regime and has long refused to engage in sports competitions against Israel. The 2017 edition of the Agalarov Cup Youth Boxing Tournament kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan, on December 20, and will wrap up on December 25. Iranian freestyle wrestler Alireza Karimi Machiani  was beating Russian Alikhan Zhabrailov in a match on November 26 and was leading 3-2, but he purposefully threw his bout to avoid competing against Israel’s Uri Kalashnikov as his second-round opponent. In a ceremony on November 29, the Islamic Republ...

Four giant new container vessels will join Iran’s shipping fleet next year, bringing the country closer to its target of scraping out a place among the world’s 10 mega shippers. “With the arrival of these vessels, the rank of the national shipping fleet in the work will rise to 16 from 20 at present,” chairman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping (IRISL) Mohammad Saeedi was quoted Saturday as saying. The report by the Fars news agency did not specify the type of the vessels but they are most likely Triple E ships which Iran has already ordered as part of a plan to expand its shipping fleet. Triple Es are very large container ships of more than 18,000 TEU. Saeedi said the new ships will help Iran’s container capacity expand 50% and the first of the four vessels will be delivered in the Persian month of Farvardin which begins on March 21, 2018. “With these vessels, the capacity of Iran’s shipping fleet will increase to 150,000 TEU,” he added. IRISL is Iran...