TEL AVIV, 01 October 2021, (TON): Israel’s foreign minister landed in Bahrain, the first high-level visit to the small Gulf state by a senior Israeli official since the signing last year of a landmark agreement to establish diplomatic ties.

Yair Lapid flew to Bahrain’s capital, Manama, for meetings with his Bahraini counterpart and to inaugurate Israel’s embassy. It will be the first official visit by an Israeli Cabinet member.

After Lapid lands, Bahrain carrier Gulf Air will launch its first direct flight between Manama and Tel Aviv.

The Israeli diplomatic delegation was to meet with its Bahraini counterparts and sign a raft of agreements to further cement bilateral ties.

Israel established formal diplomatic relations with four Arab states last year as part of the US-brokered “Abraham Accords.” Lapid has already visited the United Arab Emirates and Morocco and opened Israel’s diplomatic offices there since he became Israel’s foreign minister in June.

BRUSSELS, 01 October 2021, (TON): High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell has said that this is my first visit to Doha as High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

But, I have had the pleasure and the honour to meet with the Foreign Minister/Deputy Prime Minister on several occasions, last one in New York.

But I came here to underline the very good bilateral relations that the European Union and Qatar have, and appreciate a lot your cooperation on important global issues.

Qatar is a good friend of Europe. We are your second biggest trading partner, you are a reliable energy provider and on these times it is especially important and we work jointly on several regional issues.

But I believe, Minister, that there is potential to do more together at the regional level and globally-, and we want to explore these possibilities.

I am very thankful for having had the opportunity of meeting with His Highness, the Emir of Qatar [Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani], and I just had a good meeting with my friend the Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Foreign Affairs [Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani], continuing our talks in New York.

Allow me to announce that the European Union will soon open a Delegation in Doha, next year. This will be an important event in order to boost our ties.

WASHINGTON, 01 October 2021, (TON): The United States and Russia said in a joint statement that they had held "intensive and substantive" talks in their second meeting within a framework that is aimed at easing tensions between the world's largest nuclear weapons powers.

The two countries have agreed to set up two working groups, which will convene ahead of a third plenary meeting. A date for the third gathering was not provided.

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose countries hold 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, agreed at a June summit in Geneva to embark on an integrated bilateral 'Strategic Stability Dialogue' to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.

Armed with mandates from their leaders, delegations from the two nations restarted talks in July, the first time in nearly a year that the two had held so-called strategic stability talks amid frictions over a range of issues, including arms control.

During the second meeting held on Thursday in Geneva, the delegations headed by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov agreed the working groups would focus on principles and objectives for future arms control and capabilities and actions with strategic effects.

NAIROBI, 01 October 2021, (TON): Kenya suspended a visa-free transit agreement with Pakistan after social media sites showed videos of crowds of Pakistani nationals crowding residential areas across the Kenyan capital Nairobi.

The Interior Ministry ordered a crackdown on illegal Pakistani immigrants, saying there has been an influx of Asian foreigners who at first were thought to be Afghan refugees.

Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho ordered police working with the immigration services to crack down on illegal foreigners.

Kibicho said in a statement “the majority of these travellers have originated from Pakistan and have valid transit visas to Saudi Arabia that are issued on arrival.” “Going forward, the government will restrict the number of foreigners transiting through the country to levels that do not pose a risk to Kenya's national interest.”

MANAMA, 01 October 2021, (TON): A Gulf Air plane began the first commercial flight between Bahrain and Israel on Thursday, a year after the normalisation of diplomatic relations.

The Airbus A320 bound for Tel Aviv took off from Manama airport just over an hour after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid arrived for Israel's first bilateral ministerial visit to Bahrain.

Lapid, who landed at Bahrain's international airport in an Israir plane with an olive branch painted on its nose, will inaugurate Israel's embassy in Manama and hold talks with his Bahraini counterpart.

Bahrain and Gulf neighbour United Arab Emirates normalised relations with Israel last year in a US-brokered deal known as the Abraham Accords that built on shared business interests and worries about Iran. Sudan and Morocco followed suit.

The spokesperson said "we see Bahrain as an important partner, on the bilateral level but also as a bridge to cooperate with other countries in the region."

BEIJING, 01 October 2021, (TON): China put on an extravagant display of once-secret high-end military technology at its largest air show this week, while broadcasting its growing ambitions in space exploration and for self-sufficiency in commercial aircraft.

Pandemic-related travel restrictions meant Airshow China in the southern city of Zhuhai was a largely domestic affair, but foreign observers kept a close eye on developments from afar as China builds its military strength.

Kelvin Wong, a Singapore-based defence editor at Janes said "key platforms in service with the PLAAF – having been operated in tight secrecy previously – being shown to the public for the first time have attracted considerable attention from the international audience.”

Wong said that he pointed to WZ-7 Xianglong, a high-altitude long-endurance reconnaissance drone roughly analogous to the US-made Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk but with inferior engines. The WZ-7 has been sighted operating out of airbases close to the Sino-Indian border, the North Korean border and the South China Sea.

WASHINGTON, 01 October 2021, (TON): The top US general conceded in a stark admission on Wednesday that the United States "lost" the 20-year war in Afghanistan.

The House Armed Services Committee said "it is clear, it is obvious to all of us, that the war in Afghanistan did not end on the terms we wanted, with the Taliban in power in Kabul," General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

"The war was a strategic failure," Milley told a committee hearing about the US troop pullout from Afghanistan and the chaotic evacuation from the capital Kabul.

Milley said "it wasn't lost in the last 20 days or even 20 months."

"There's a cumulative effect to a series of strategic decisions that go way back," said the general, the top military advisor to President Joe Biden, who ordered an end to the 20-year US troop presence in Afghanistan.

Milley said "whenever you get some phenomenon like a war that is lost -- and it has been, in the sense of we accomplished our strategic task of protecting America against Al-Qaeda, but certainly the end state is a whole lot different than what we wanted."

He said "so whenever a phenomenon like that happens, there's an awful lot of causal factors and we're going to have to figure that out. A lot of lessons learned here."

KABUL, 01 October 2021, (TON): The Taliban ordered their fighters to leave private homes they had taken over during last month’s blitz when the group seized control of Afghanistan, an apparent effort to impose order among Taliban ranks.

Meanwhile, in the capital of Kabul, the Taliban fired shots to disperse a women’s rally demanding equal rights while the regional chief for the International Federation of the Red Cross warned that Afghanistan was sliding into a deep “major humanitarian crisis” with the coming winter and severe financial shortfalls.

The order by Acting Prime Minister Hasan Akhund followed recent public statements by Taliban officials hinting at plans to improve organisation and marshal fighters.

It said Taliban members belonging to the group’s defence, interior and intelligence agencies who are living in private homes need to “report back to military bases” across the country.

NAYPYITAW, 01 October 2021, (TON): The anti-junta Kani People’s Defence Force (KPDF) launched three attacks on two military vessels carrying reinforcements, ammunition and food up the Chindwin River in Sagaing Region’s Kani Township, according to the group.

According to a KPDF information officer “the targeted boats were transporting around 200 soldiers from Ahlone port in Monywa, more than 30 miles south of Kani.”

He speculated that the junta troops on board were reinforcements for the military units fighting PDFs in Mingin, Kalay and across Chin State.

He said “we found that the vessel was also carrying weapons and ammunition. Three clashes took place between us and the two vessels. We, the PDF, did what needed to be done.”

According to the spokesperson “the clashes each lasted between 30 minutes and one hour and the attacks were carried out from three different locations on both the eastern and western banks of the Chindwin. Five KPDF members were injured.”

The KPDF information officer said “we didn’t use muskets. We used heavy weapons that we crafted ourselves. To be honest, it’s really hard for us to protect the area when we have to use makeshift weapons like this.”

According to local sources “some 1,500 locals from the 10 villages along the river fled their homes when the fighting broke out.”

Kani locals told Myanmar Now that the two boats continued moving along the river despite the attacks.

The number of casualties on the military’s side was not known.

NAYPYITAW, 01 October 2021, (TON): According to a local social welfare group “the bodies of two missing men were found in a Demoso Township village in Kayah (Karenni) State on Tuesday in an area recently occupied by junta troops.”

The body of one man was found near a football field, and the other discovered in a septic tank that was still under construction, both in Dawkhalaiklin village.

Maung Htoo, the father of the first victim 20-year-old Kyaw Lin Paing was only able to identify the body as belonging to his son because of the clothes he was wearing and the motorcycle parked nearby.

He had been missing since leaving home on September 22 along with his cousin, 23-year-old Hsu Reh, to buy supplies in a market in the Kayah State capital.

Maung Htoo said “he was heading towards Loikaw to get supplies for Hsu Reh’s three-month-old baby.”

Kyaw Lin Paing had been staying in Hpehlar village in the same township after fleeing his home in Demoso town due to the ongoing clashes between the military and the resistance, according to his father.

His family buried him immediately after his body was found, and is also planning to hold a funeral for Hsu Reh on Friday, as he has also not been heard from since leaving home last week.