Author: strong

Australia said Saturday it was noting with regret France’s recall of its ambassador over the surprise cancellation of a submarine contract in favour of a US deal. France recalled its ambassadors to Australia and the United States on Friday in an unprecedented show of anger over a deal among the United States, Australia and Britain to provide Australia with a fleet of at least eight nuclear-power submarines. The deal scraps a 90 billion Australian dollar (USD 66 billion) contract with French majority state-owned Naval Group, signed in 2016, to build…

The Pentagon retreated from its defence of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing Friday that a review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believed. The strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference. For days after the August 29 strike, Pentagon officials asserted that it had been conducted correctly, despite 10 civilians being killed, including seven children. News organisations later raised doubts about…

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Friday met with his counterparts from Iran, Armenia and Uzbekistan and exchanged views on the recent developments in Afghanistan, confronting regional challenges and the ways to boost bilateral ties. Jaishankar, who is in the Tajik capital to attend a key meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on the situation in Afghanistan after its takeover by the Taliban last month, in a tweet said he was glad to meet Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian on the sidelines of the SCO meet in Dushanbe.…