DHAKA, 08 August 2022, (TON): Bangladesh and China signed four MoUs and agreements to boost cooperation between the two countries.

The cooperation documents were signed after an hourlong bilateral meeting between Chinese State Councillors and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Bangladesh counterpart AK Abdul Momen at a city hotel.

State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam briefed journalists after the bilateral meeting and said details of the signed documents will be shared with the media later.

Disaster management, cultural exchange (renewal) and marine science cooperation are among the signed documents.

WASHINGTON, 07 August 2022, (TON): The White House said on Saturday that China’s actions in and around the Taiwan Strait were provocative and irresponsible after Taiwan officials said Chinese aircraft and warships rehearsed an attack on the island.

A White House spokesperson said “these activities are a significant escalation in China’s efforts to change the status quo. They are provocative, irresponsible, and raise the risk of miscalculation.”

The spokesperson said “they are also at odds with our long-standing goal of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, which is what the world expects.”

TEHRAN, 07 August 2022, (TON): State media reported “Iran’s foreign minister called for a realistic response from the US to Iranian proposals at indirect talks in Vienna aimed at reviving Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.”

The comments came as talks continued for a third day on Saturday with few expecting a breakthrough compromise while Tehran’s disputed uranium enrichment program surges forward.

State media reported “Hossein Amirabdollahian stressed the need for a realistic US response to Iran’s constructive proposals on various issues to make the deal work.”

Little remains of the 2015 pact between Iran and the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, which lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for curbs on Iranian enrichment activity the West fears could yield atomic bombs.

ZURICH, 07 August 2022, (TON): The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency raised grave concerns on Saturday about the shelling the previous day at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, saying the action showed the risk of a nuclear disaster.

Both sides accused each other on Saturday of engaging in nuclear terrorism.

Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom blamed Russia for the damage while Russia’s defense ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said “I’m extremely concerned by the shelling yesterday at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”

Grossi, who leads the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, urged all sides in the Ukraine conflict to exercise the utmost restraint around the plant.

Shells hit a high-voltage power line on Friday at the facility, prompting its operators to disconnect a reactor despite no radioactive leak being detected.

RIYADH, 07 August 2022, (TON): Saudi Press Agency reported “Saudi Arabia condemned and denounced an attack carried out by the Israeli occupation forces on the Gaza Strip.”

Israel’s military warned deadly air strikes against Palestinian militants in Gaza could last a week, as cross-border fire reverberated for a second day in the worst escalation since last year’s war.

The foreign ministry said “the Kingdom stands by the Palestinian people, and called on the international community to assume its responsibilities to end the escalation.”

Health authorities in the Palestinian enclave, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas, said a five-year-old girl was among 15 people killed since Friday, adding that more than 140 have been wounded.

KYIV, 07 August 2022, (TON): Ukraine’s military and local officials said “Russian forces began an assault Saturday on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.”

Both cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka have been considered key targets of Russia’s ongoing offensive across Ukraine’s east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.

The Ukrainian General Staff said “in the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attack and army aviation.”

The last Russian strike on Sloviansk was July 30, but Ukrainian forces are fortifying their positions around the city in expectation of new fighting.

VIENNA, 07 August 2022, (TON): Britain, France and Germany urged Iran not to make unrealistic demands in the talks to salvage a 2015 deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Officials from world powers and Iran were meeting in the Austrian capital for the first time since March, when negotiations which began in 2021 to reintegrate the United States into the agreement stalled.

“Today’s talks in Vienna do not mark a new round of negotiations. These are technical discussions,” the three countries known as the E3 group said in a statement.

The statement said “the text is on the table. There will be no re-opening of negotiations. Iran must now decide to conclude the deal while this is still possible. We urge Iran not to make unrealistic demands outside the scope of the JCPoA.”

DUBAI, 07 August 2022, (TON): The commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday that Israel would pay a high price for its latest attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza.

It quoted Major General Hossein Salami as saying “the Israelis will pay yet another heavy price for their recent crime.”

Israeli aircraft struck in Gaza and Palestinians fired rockets at Israel after an Israeli operation against the Islamic Jihad militant group ended more than a year of relative calm along the border.

LONDON, 07 August 2022, (TON): Liz Truss, the front-runner to become Britain’s next prime minister, plans to rush through tax cuts earlier than planned in an attempt to boost the country’s flagging economy.

The newspaper said “Truss was considering accelerating by six months her plan to reverse this year’s increase in social security contributions which had been pencilled in for April 2023.”

It said “advisers to Truss believed the cut could be introduced within days of an emergency budget that her government would deliver in September, if she wins the ruling Conservative Party’s leadership race that is due to end on Sept. 5.”

Truss’s rival, former finance minister Rishi Sunak, says cutting taxes now would add more fuel to Britain’s soaring inflation rate which is set to surpass 13 percent in October, according to the Bank of England’s latest forecasts.

GAZA, 07 August 2022, (TON): Israeli airstrikes flattened homes in Gaza and rocket barrages into southern Israel persisted, raising fears of an escalation in a conflict that has killed at least 15 people in the coastal strip.

The fighting began with Israel’s killing of a senior commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group in a wave of strikes that Israel said were meant to prevent an imminent attack. A 5-year-old girl and two women are among those killed in the strikes.

So far, Hamas, the larger militant group that rules Gaza, appeared to stay on the sidelines of the conflict, keeping its intensity somewhat contained.

Israel and Hamas fought a war barely a year ago, one of four major conflicts and several smaller battles over the last 15 years that wreaked a staggering cost to the impoverished territory’s 2 million Palestinian residents.