On Thursday, a Qatari court accepted India’'s appeal regarding the death penalty awarded to eight Indian Navy veterans in an espionage case. The court will now study the appeal to take a decision in the case in which employees of Al Dahra Global Technologies and Consultancy Services were arrested last year in August for spying on Qatar’s submarine programme for Israel. The accused were sentenced to death by the Court of First Instance on 26 October.
The Afghan Embassy in New Delhi announced the permanent closure of its diplomatic mission on Friday. The move comes eight weeks after the embassy ceased operations on 30 September with the hope that the Indian government would adopt a more favourable stance to enable normal continuation of the embassy operations. The embassy informed that currently there are no diplomats from the Afghan Republic in India, with those who served in Delhi having safely reached third countries. It mentioned that the only individuals present in India now are diplomats affiliated with the Taliban.
During an ongoing four-day bilateral visit to South Korea, Indian Army Chief Gen. Manoj Pande was briefed at the joint security area and demilitarised zone about security aspects in the highly sensitive zone. He also visited the cyber command, “where he was briefed on effective response to the increasingly advanced & sophisticated cyber threats,” the Army said.
Leading scientists urged caution over panic being created by the mention of another pandemic on Thursday after the World Health Organization requested more information from China on a rise of respiratory illnesses and pneumonia clusters among children. International concerns were first sparked after an alert was published on Tuesday by the monitoring service ProMED, which called for more information about “undiagnosed pneumonia - China (Beijing, Liaoning).” The wording was very similar to that of the first-ever alert being sent about what would become COVID-19, on 30 December 2019: “Undiagnosed pneumonia - China (Hubei).”
Five people, including three children, were hurt in a knife attack in Dublin, Ireland on Thursday, which led to riots across the city. Following clashes between riot police and protestors, transport was suspended and patients were urged against travelling unless absolutely essential.
At the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Security Council meeting in Minsk on Thursday, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko argued that keeping nuclear weapons in his country provides regional stability and authority on the international stage. “We are not threatening anyone. We are simply learning the so-called diplomatic etiquette from those who turned the language of force into a global trend,” Lukashenko said.