ALI IMRAN

  STOCKHOLM: At least 10 people were arrested, and several police officers injured, in violence which broke out in southern Sweden after an anti-Muslim Danish politician was blocked from attending an extremely offensive rally, police said on Saturday. Protesters threw stones at police and burned tyres on the streets of Malmo late on Friday, with the violence escalating as the evening wore on, according to police and local media. The demonstration of about 300 people was connected to an incident earlier in the day in which protesters burned a copy of the Islamic holy book, police spokesman Rickard Lundqvist told Swedish tabloid  Expressen . Between 10 and 20 protesters were arrested late on Friday and “have all been released”, police spokesman Patric Fors said. ARTICLE CONTINUES AFTER AD Several police were slightly injured, he added. The violence had subsided by Saturday morning. “Those who act like this have nothing to do with Islam,” Samir Muric, an imam, said on Facebook

  Bahrain said on Wednesday it was committed to the creation of a Palestinian state in talks with US State Secretary Mike Pompeo, implicitly rejecting his push for Arab countries to swiftly normalise ties with Israel. Pompeo was in Manama as part of a Middle East trip aimed at building more ties between the Jewish state and the Arab world after a with the United Arab Emirates. However, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa said he told Pompeo that his country remains committed to the Arab Peace Initiative — which calls for Israel's complete withdrawal from the Palestinian territories occupied after 1967, in exchange for peace and the full normalisation of relations. “The king stressed the importance of intensifying efforts to end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict according to the two-state solution [...] to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” the official (BNA) reported. The US chief diplomat has said he is hopeful

  Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it will not follow the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in  establishing diplomatic ties  with Israel until the Jewish state has signed an internationally recognised peace accord with the Palestinians. The UAE last week became the first Gulf state to normalise relations with Israel, in a historic US-brokered accord that raised the prospect of similar deals with other Arab states including Saudi Arabia. But after days of conspicuous silence and in the face of US pressure to announce a similar deal, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan ruled out the possibility until the Palestinian issue is resolved. “Peace must be achieved with the Palestinians” on the basis of international agreements as a pre-condition for any normalisation of relations, Prince Faisal told reporters during a visit to Berlin. “Once that is achieved all things are possible,” he added, in a comment that was consistent with Saudi Arabia's previous stance on t

  England's school examinations regulator said it had made a mistake with the way it awarded grades to school students in England after their exams were cancelled due to Covid-19, and the grades would now be based on teachers' assessments instead. Roger Taylor, chair of the Ofqual exam board regulator, said the body had taken “the wrong road” and had to change course as he offered an apology to students and to schools. The government has faced days of criticism after Ofqual used an algorithm to assess grade predictions made by teachers, and lowered those grades for almost 40 per cent of students taking their main school-leaving exams. Media reports had earlier suggested the British government was working with regulators on how to resolve the escalating row. A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government was continuing to work on a solution, and that Johnson had spoken with education minister Gavin Williamson and other officials on Monday morning from h

  TAIPEI: China warned Washington not to “play with fire” on Wednesday as a US delegation wrapped up a historic trip to the self-ruled island of Taiwan. Beijing has been infuriated by the  highest-profile visit  in decades to Taiwan, which it sees as part of its territory, as US-China relations plunge to a record low over a range of issues from trade to military and the coronavirus pandemic. Health chief Alex Azar finished a three-day visit to Taiwan, during which he criticised China’s handling of the pandemic and visited the shrine of a former Taiwan president hated by the Communist Party leadership. Beijing slammed the visit on Wednesday and said it “firmly opposes official exchanges between the US and Taiwan under any pretext”. “On issues involving China’s core interests, some people in the US must not harbour illusions, those who play with fire will get burned,” said foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a regular press briefing. “I would also like to remind the Taiwan

Lebanese rescue teams pulled out bodies and hunted for missing in the wreckage of buildings on Wednesday as investigations blamed negligence for a massive warehouse explosion that sent a devastating blast wave across Beirut, killing at least 135. More than 5,000 people were injured in Tuesday’s explosion at Beirut port, Health Minister Hamad Hassan said, and up to 250,000 were left without homes fit to live in after shockwaves smashed building facades, sucked furniture out into streets and shattered windows miles inland. Hassan said tens of people remained missing. Prime Minister Hassan Diab declared three days of mourning from Thursday. The death toll was expected to rise from the blast, which officials blamed on a huge stockpile of highly explosive material stored for years in unsafe conditions at the port. The explosion was the most powerful ever to rip through Beirut, a city still scarred by civil war that ended three decades ago and reeling from an economic meltdown and a