UAE government reduces driving age, amends traffic regulations

Previously the legal age for obtaining a driver’s license was 18. (AFP)
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Updated 25 October 2024
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UAE government reduces driving age, amends traffic regulations

DUBAI: The UAE Government on Friday announced a new federal decree law on traffic regulations via a statement on X.

The minimum driving age has now been reduced to 17 under the new law. 

Previously the legal age for obtaining a driver’s license was 18. 

The announcement comes with a new law prohibiting pedestrians from crossing roads that exceed the speed limit of 80 kilometers per hour.


Five killed in Turkish strikes on PKK allies: Iraqi local sources

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Five killed in Turkish strikes on PKK allies: Iraqi local sources

Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria in a 24-hour military escalation, after an attack on Wednesday at state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) near Ankara
“A series of Turkish air strikes targeted the Sinjar Resistance Units,” a security official told AFP

BAGHDAD: Turkish air strikes on northern Iraq targeting a group affiliated with Turkiye’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) killed five people on Friday, local sources said.
The strikes came after a Syria war monitor said Turkish drone strikes had killed 27 civilians in Syria in a 24-hour military escalation, after an attack on Wednesday at state-run Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) near Ankara, which Turkiye said killed five people.
After the Ankara attack, Turkiye’s defense ministry had announced strikes against sites linked to the PKK in Iraq and Syria.
“A series of Turkish air strikes targeted the Sinjar Resistance Units,” a security official told AFP, reporting a total of five people killed, as the PKK claimed Wednesday’s attack.
The official spoke from Nineveh province, where Sinjar is located, under cover of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media.
Speaking under similar ground rules, a second official in Sinjar gave the same toll for the “Turkish aerial bombardments targeting positions of the Sinjar Resistance Units.”
In a statement, the anti-terrorist service of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, adjacent to Nineveh, gave a lower toll of “three fighters killed” in Sinjar.
It said the strikes by Turkish drones and warplanes targeted PKK positions.
Turkiye frequently carries out ground and air offensives on positions of the PKK — which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state — in northern Iraq, the autonomous Kurdistan region and the mountains of Sinjar.
Turkiye has also over the past 25 years operated several dozen military bases in northern Iraq in its war against the PKK.

Israel army confirms strike on Syria-Lebanon crossing

Updated 25 October 2024
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Israel army confirms strike on Syria-Lebanon crossing

  • Israeli military statement: Hezbollah ‘exploits the Jousieh civilian crossing … to transfer weapons’

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military confirmed on Friday that it had struck a border crossing between Syria and Lebanon that it said was being used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons.
“Overnight ... the IAF (air force) struck Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure sites at the Jousieh border crossing in the northern Bekaa area (of Lebanon), the military said in a statement, adding that Hezbollah “exploits the Jousieh civilian crossing, which is under the control of the Syrian regime and is operated by Syrian military security, to transfer weapons.”


Gaza rescuers say children among 20 killed in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis

Updated 25 October 2024
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Gaza rescuers say children among 20 killed in Israeli strikes on Khan Younis

  • Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the home of the Al-Fara family

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes hit two homes at dawn on Friday in Khan Younis, the territory’s main southern city, killing at least 20 people including children.
Fourteen people were killed in a strike that hit the home of the Al-Fara family, and a separate air raid killed another six, according to agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal.
Bassal said the 14 included nine children under the age of 16.
AFP photographs showed relatives at the European hospital in Khan Younis mourning the deaths of children, the bodies of several of them wrapped in white shrouds.
The military, in a statement giving an operational update, said that “a number of terrorists were eliminated from the air and ground” in southern Gaza.
While Israeli forces continue to operate across Gaza, recent weeks have seen an intensified air and ground assault in the territory’s north, where the military reports Hamas militants are regrouping.


Kurdish rebels claim deadly Ankara attack

Updated 25 October 2024
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Kurdish rebels claim deadly Ankara attack

  • ‘The act of sacrifice at TAI campus in Ankara at around 15:30 local time on Wednesday was carried out by a team of the immortals battalion’

ISTANBUL: The outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Friday claimed a deadly attack on a state-run Turkish defense firm in the capital Ankara.
“The act of sacrifice at TAI campus in Ankara at around 15:30 local time on Wednesday was carried out by a team of the immortals battalion” of the PKK, it said on Telegram, referring to Turkish Aerospace Industries.


Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate sentenced to another 6 months in prison

Updated 25 October 2024
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Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate sentenced to another 6 months in prison

  • It said the charge was brought after Mohammadi staged a protest against the execution of another political prisoner in the women’s ward of Evin Prison on Aug.6
  • She has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and years behind bars

DUBAI: Iranian authorities have issued an additional six-month prison sentence against Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, a group campaigning for the activist said.
The Free Narges Coalition said in a statement on Thursday that Mohammadi was sentenced on Oct. 19 to an additional six months in prison on the charge of “disobeying and resisting orders.”
According to the statement, the charge was brought after Mohammadi staged a protest against the execution of another political prisoner in the women’s ward of Evin Prison on Aug.6.
Mohammadi is the 19th woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and the second Iranian woman after human rights activist Shirin Ebadi in 2003. Mohammadi, 52, has kept up her activism despite numerous arrests by Iranian authorities and years behind bars.
She is being held at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, which houses political prisoners and those with Western ties. She already had been serving a 30-month sentence, to which 15 more months were added in January. Iran’s government has not acknowledged her additional sentencing.
The latest order reflects the Iranian theocracy’s anger that she was awarded the Nobel prize in October 2023 for years of activism despite a decades-long government campaign targeting her.
Mohammadi was a leading light for nationwide, women-led protests sparked by the death last year of a 22-year-old woman in police custody that have grown into one of the most intense challenges to Iran’s theocratic government. That woman, Mahsa Amini, had been detained for allegedly not wearing her headscarf to the liking of authorities.
The statement demanded Mohammadi’s unconditional release, saying her health situation has deteriorated drastically during her long incarceration and she is suffering from heart disease.