
Israeli court rejects Netanyahu's call to postpone graft trial hearings
An Israeli court on Friday rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's request to postpone his testimony in his corruption trial, after US President Donald Trump said the case should be cancelled.
The Jerusalem district court said in a judgement published online that 'in its current form (his request) does not provide a basis or detailed justification for the cancellation of the hearings.'

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Al Arabiya
43 minutes ago
- Al Arabiya
5 Greek Government Officials Resign Over EU Farming Subsidy Fraud Allegations
Five high-ranking Greek government officials, including a minister and three deputy ministers, resigned Friday following allegations of involvement in corruption over the mismanagement of European Union farming subsidies. The case stems from the alleged mismanagement of EU subsidies for agriculture between 2019 and 2022 by a government agency known by its Greek acronym OPEKEPE, tasked with handling the funds. According to the European Public Prosecutor's Office, a significant number of individuals received subsidies through the agency based on false declarations, including claims of owning or leasing pastures that were in fact public land. The suspects continued submitting false declarations of livestock until 2024, maintaining subsidy payment entitlement, it added. The prosecutor's office sent a hefty case file to Greece's parliament earlier this week, including allegations of the possible involvement of government ministers in an organized fraud scheme. Members of parliament enjoy immunity from prosecution in Greece that can only be lifted by parliamentary vote. In a resignation letter to the prime minister Friday, Migration and Asylum Minister Makis Voridis maintained his innocence, saying he was stepping down in order to concentrate on clearing his name. Voridis served as agriculture minister from mid-2019 to early 2021. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accepted his resignation as well as those of the deputy ministers of foreign affairs, agriculture and food, and digital governance and of the general secretary of agriculture and food. Replacements for all five will be named in the coming days, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said in a statement. The European Commission announced earlier this month it would reduce the amount of farm subsidies for Greece by five percent, for a total of 392 million euros.


Saudi Gazette
2 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
Iran's FM says talks with Washington 'complicated' by US strikes on nuclear sites
TEHRAN — Iran's top diplomat said on Friday that the possibility of new negotiations with the United States on his country's nuclear programme has been "complicated" by US strikes on three of the sites, which he conceded had caused "serious damage." The US was one of the parties to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which saw Iran agree to limit its uranium enrichment programme in exchange for sanctions relief and other benefits. That deal unravelled in 2018 after President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out during his first term, calling it the "worst deal ever negotiated." Trump had suggested he is interested in new talks with Iran and said the two sides would meet next week. In an interview on Iranian state television broadcast late on Thursday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left open the possibility that his country would again enter talks on its nuclear program, but suggested it would not be anytime soon. "No agreement has been made for resuming the negotiations," he said. "No time has been set, no promise has been made and we haven't even talked about restarting the talks." The American decision to intervene militarily "made it more complicated and more difficult" for talks on Iran's nuclear programme, Araghchi said. In Friday prayers, many imams stressed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's message from the day before that the war had been a victory for Iran. Cleric Hamzeh Khalili, who also is the deputy chief justice of Iran, vowed during a prayer service in Tehran that the courts would prosecute people accused of spying for Israel "in a special way." During the 12-day conflict with Israel, Iran hanged several people who it already had in custody on espionage charges, sparking fears from activists that it could conduct a wave of executions after the fighting ended. Authorities have reportedly detained dozens in various cities on the charge of cooperation with Israel. Israel attacked Iran on 13 June, targeting its nuclear sites, defence systems, high-ranking military officials and atomic scientists in waved of strikes. In almost two weeks of fighting, Israel said it killed some 30 Iranian commanders and 11 nuclear scientists, while hitting eight nuclear-related facilities and more than 720 military infrastructure sites. More than 1,000 people were killed, including at least 417 civilians, according to the Washington-based Human Rights Activists group. Iran fired more than 550 ballistic missiles at Israel, most of which were intercepted but those that got through caused damage in many areas and killed 28 people. Israeli military spokesperson Brigadier General Effie Defrin said Friday that in some areas it had exceeded its operational goals, but needed to remain vigilant. "We are under no illusion, the enemy has not changed its intentions," he said. The US stepped in on Sunday to hit Iran's three most important nuclear sites with a wave of cruise missiles and bunker-buster bombs dropped by B-2 bombers, designed to penetrate deep into the ground to damage the heavily-fortified targets. Iran, in retaliation, fired missiles at the US military base, Al Udeida, in Qatar on Monday but caused no known casualties. Trump said the American attacks "completely and fully obliterated" Iran's nuclear programme, though Khamenei on Thursday accused the US president of exaggerating the damage, saying the strikes did not "achieve anything significant." There has been speculation that Iran moved much of its highly-enriched uranium before the strikes, something that it told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, that it planned to do. Even if that turns out to be true, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi told Radio France International that the damage done to the Fordow site, which is built into a mountain, "is very, very, very considerable." Among other things, he said, centrifuges are "quite precise machines" and it's "not possible" that the concussion from multiple 30,000-pound bombs would not have caused "important physical damage." "These centrifuges are no longer operational," he said. Araghchi himself acknowledged "the level of damage is high and it's serious damage." He added that Iran had not yet decided whether to allow IAEA inspectors to assess the damage, but they would be kept out "for the time being". — Euronews


Saudi Gazette
3 hours ago
- Saudi Gazette
Outrage as Trump compares Iran strikes to Japan atomic bombing
SINGAPORE — Japan has condemned US President Donald Trump for comparing recent US strikes on Iran to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II. "That hit ended the war," Trump told reporters on Wednesday. "I don't want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don't want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing." About 140,000 people died when the US dropped atomic bombs on the two southern Japanese cities in August 1945. Survivors live with psychological trauma and heightened cancer risk to this day. If Trump's comment "justifies the dropping of the atomic bomb, it is extremely regrettable for us as a city that was bombed," said Nagasaki Mayor Shiro Suzuki. Trump's comments are "unacceptable", said Mimaki Toshiyuki, an atomic bomb survivor who co-chairs the Nobel Peace Prize-winning advocacy group Nihon Hidankyo, public broadcaster NHK reported. "I'm really disappointed. All I have is anger," said another member of the group, Teruko Yokoyama, in a Kyodo News of the atomic bomb attacks staged a protest in Hiroshima on Thursday, demanding Trump retract his in Hiroshima also passed a resolution on Thursday rejecting statements that justify the use of atomic bombs, and called for armed conflicts to be settled if Tokyo would lodge a complaint over Trump's remarks, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hayashi Yoshimasa said that Japan has repeatedly expressed its position on atomic bombs to comments on Wednesday came as he pushed back on a leaked intelligence report that said US strikes on Iran only set its nuclear programme back by a few had insisted that the strikes "obliterated" the program and set it back "decades" - a claim backed by CIA director John is the only country in the world to have been hit by a nuclear attack and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still stir painful Hiroshima, a peace flame that symbolises the country's opposition to nuclear weapons has been burning since the 1960s while a clock that counts the number of days since the world's last nuclear attack is displayed at the entrance of a war leaders who visit Hiroshima are also asked to make paper cranes to affirm their commitment to peace. — BBC