Human Rights

28 Mar 2019; DW: Germany has extended its current ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia for six more months, ending on September 30, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Thursday.

During that period, no new contracts will be approved, Seibert said. The decision came after Merkel met with members of her cabinet to review the policy.

Panchkula (Hry), Mar 28; PTI/GANASHAKTI: A special court here, which had acquitted Swami Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta Express blast case, has said a dastardly act of violence remained unpunished for want of credible and admissible evidence.

All the four accused -- Naba Kumar Sarkar alias Swami Aseemanand, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan and Rajinder Chaudhary -- had been acquitted by the court here on March 20.

Three Kashmiri separatists were killed by India security forces in an alleged encounter in Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district on Thursday.

India security forces allege to have launched an anti-separatists operation in Yawran forests in the district following information about their presence, a J&K police spokesperson said.

The slain separatists have been identified as “Sajad Khanday, Aqib Ahmad Dar and Basharat Ahmad Mir, all residents of Pulwama," the spokesperson said.

28 Mar 2019; DW: Facebook on Wednesday announced it was extending its ban on hate speech to include content related to white nationalism and separatism on both its Facebook and Instagram platforms. It will be enforced as of next week.

Facebook said in a statement "white nationalism and separatism cannot be meaningfully separated from white supremacy and organized hate groups."

28 Mar 2019; DW: Malta's navy said that a special operations team had taken control of a tanker that was hijacked by migrants off the coast of Libya. The ship arrived at a Maltese port on Thursday morning.

The migrants had taken control of the vessel on Wednesday, and directed it north toward Europe, according to Italian and Maltese authorities.

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. Syria has requested an emergency UN Security Council meeting after the United States recognized Israel’s sovereignty over Golan Heights, AFP said on Wednesday citing diplomatic sources.

France, which holds the Security Council presidency this month, will appoint the date of the meeting soon.

MOSCOW, March 27. /TASS/. Unilateral approaches of the US and its allies increase tensions in the world and defy international law, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a session of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund’s Board of Trustees.

Efforts taken by public diplomacy "play a major role in maintaining trust and mutual understanding between the peoples, between the civic societies," the top diplomat stressed.

UNITED NATIONS, March 28. /TASS/. Washington should stop its unilateral steps undermining the Middle East settlement process, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vladimir Safronkov, told the UN Security Council’s emergency meeting in the wake of the US decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty on the Golan Heights.

UNITED NATIONS, March 27 (Xinhua) -- The top United Nations political official told the Security Council on Wednesday that the Secretary-General had concerns about the situation in Idlib in recent weeks amid escalating violence.

UNITED NATIONS, March 27 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy said Wednesday that the Golan Heights is recognized by the international community as an occupied territory.

The UN Security Council has adopted several resolutions that demand Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967, Wu Haitao, the deputy permanent representative of the Chinese mission to the United Nations, told a Security Council meeting on the Golan Heights.