Germany's Lufthansa suspends flights to Tehran until Thursday

German flag air carrier Lufthansa has suspended flights to and from Tehran until Thursday, a spokesperson for the company has said, citing security threats as the reason.

"[Lufthansa], after a thorough evaluation, has decided to suspend flights to and from Tehran until Thursday, April 11, 2024 ... The safety of our guests and crew members is Lufthansa's top priority," German newspaper FAZ quoted the spokesperson as saying.

The spokesperson did not give specific reasons for suspending flights but said the decision was due to "the current situation in the Middle East."

In recent years, Lufthansa has suspended air service with Tehran several times - in particular, following the mass protests after the death of Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in 2022 and a drone attack on the city of Isfahan.

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Three Ukrainian drones were shot down in Fatezhsky district of Kursk region at night, there are no casualties and destruction, tentatively, Governor Roman Starovoit said.

US convincing world it ‘has to be marginalized’ with actions on global stage

The US is discrediting the institutions it designed and convincing the world it needs to be marginalized through its actions on the world stage, Dr. Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour.

While discussing requests from US lawmakers to US President Joe Biden to bar top Iranian diplomats from attending the upcoming UN meeting in New York, Marandi said the “harassment” of Iranian officials is not uncommon from the US but each instance is “further discrediting the United States,” and “The city of New York as a center for international conferences and international negotiations.”

“As the US becomes more irrational in its diplomatic approach, [it will] create an incentive for the Global South and the international community to rely less on the UN and to focus more on building new regional or international organizations, such as BRICS, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Marandi explained.

Last month, a group of 27 bipartisan US lawmakers requested that US President Joe Biden block a top Iranian government official from entering the US for the UN General Assembly meetings in September.

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Transnistria president says forum in Moldova without PMR, Russian participation a mistake

The president of unrecognized Transnistria, or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), Vadim Krasnoselsky, called the forum on Transnistrian settlement scheduled in Moldova for April 11, to which representatives of the PMR and Russia had not been invited, a mistake.

“The PMR president considers its organization a big European mistake, which will nullify the work of the “5+2” format and support Moldova’s pressure on Transnistria,” the Transnistrian presidential press service said.

It said Krasnoselsky said this at a meeting with EU envoy at Transnistrian settlement talks, Dorota Dlouchy-Suliga.

A source earlier told Sputnik that Moldovan politicians, experts and diplomats from the US, EU and Ukraine plan to discuss issues of Transnistrian settlement in Moldova on April 11 without the participation of representatives of Transnistria and Russia. In turn, Moldovan Deputy PM for Reintegration Oleg Serebrian said talks with Tiraspol were deadlocked, so Chisinau moved to making independent decisions, actually leaving the negotiation format.

The talks on the Transnistrian settlement in the “5+2” format involve Chisinau and Tiraspol as parties to the conflict, Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as mediators, and the European Union and the US as observers.

Transnistria, 60 percent of whose population are Russians and Ukrainians, sought to secede from Moldova even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing that Moldova would join Romania on a wave of nationalism. In 1992, after an unsuccessful attempt by the Moldovan authorities to resolve the problem by force, Transnistria became a territory virtually outside of Chisinau's control.

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European parliament backs bill against illegal migration

The European Parliament on Wednesday approved by a majority of the votes a controversial bill called the "Pact on Migration and Asylum."

The bill is designed to help combat illegal migration and human trafficking, as well as to toughen penalties for crimes in this area within the European Union.

"We have delivered a robust legislative framework on how to deal with migration and asylum in the EU," the president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, said on X.

The pact will now be formally approved by the European Council in the coming weeks. The EU member states will then have another two years to implement it.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said on Wednesday that the approval of the pact by the EU Parliament is "the best possible compromise" after years of stalemate.

"After years of stalemate in migration policy, today's vote in the European Parliament has finally overcome the Dublin agreement," Piantedosi said.

Hungary will not allow undocumented migrants to enter the country despite the approval of the new migration pact, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said.

"This pact will give the green light for tens and hundreds of thousands of migrants to invade European countries ... We will not allow this to happen in Central Europe. We, Hungarians, no matter how much pressure is put on us, no matter how the representatives of the European Parliament vote on any migration pact, we will not refuse to physically close the borders, that is, we will protect the border," Szijjarto told a news conference.

Brussels does not provide Hungary with financial support to curb the flow of undocumented migrants on the EU's external border, the Hungarian ministry said, adding that the EU, on the contrary, pressures Budapest to "strive to preserve its identity and security."

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has also slammed the migration pact as "another nail in the coffin of the EU."

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📹💥The Russian "Giatsint-S" howitzer unit of the "Center" group of troops has destroyed Ukrainian artillery guns in the Avdeyevka area during a counter-battery battle, the Russian Defense Ministry told Sputnik.

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Mideast nations convey US message to Iran to de-escalate tensions with Israel - report

US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk has asked the foreign ministers of Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to urge Iran to "lower tensions with Israel" following a deadly Israeli airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Syria in early April, according to Reuters.

McGurk asked the officials to contact Iran's foreign minister to deliver the message, which they did, unnamed sources told the news agency. This comes after Bloomberg News quoted intelligence sources as saying that the US and its allies believe "a major missile or drone attack by Iran or its proxies on Israel is imminent in the coming days."

On April 1, Israel carried out an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, destroying the building. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said seven of its members were killed in the attack, including two commanders. Israel did not explicitly admit it was behind the attack.

Iran condemned the strike as unprecedented and vowed a response "of the same magnitude and severity.”

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❗️ Russian troops struck Ukrainian strongholds near Odessa, some Romanian mercenaries are believed to be among the dead, Sergei Lebedev, the coordinator of the Nikolayev underground, told Sputnik.

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Key statements by Sergei Lebedev, the coordinator of the Nikolayev underground:

▪️ A powerful explosion occurred in the Kherson area, controlled by Ukrainian troops, near the railway station, everything is cordoned off.

▪️ Strikes were recorded in the Kiev-controlled part of the Zaporozhye region, where Ukrainian troops are stationed.

▪️ A barracks on the outskirts of Lvov has been hit and many ambulances have gone there.

▪️ The village of Eskhar in Kharkov, where energy facilities are located, was hit by 8 missiles, the thermal power plant and the condensation power plant are not working.

▪️ In the Lvov region of Ukraine, the town of Stryi was hit by five rockets, one of which hit the local thermal power station.

▪️Strikes were recorded in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine.

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📹 Russian troops used a kamikaze drone to destroy Ukrainian troops in the village of Semyonovka in the Donetsk People's Republic.

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Tripolskaya power plant near Kiev on fire after strike last night

The Tripolskaya thermal power plant is the largest in the Kiev region, it supplies energy to Kiev, Cherkasskaya and Zhytomyr regions.

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Russian Army grew 15% since the start of Ukraine conflict - US General

"In sum, Russia is on track to command the largest military on the continent," US Army General Christopher Cavoli, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told the House Armed Services Committee.

The US general added that regardless of the outcome of the Ukraine conflict, "Russia will be larger, more lethal and angrier with the West."

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🚨 WATCH LIVE: Lavrov holds meeting with BRICS lawmakers

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❗️Ukrainian company Centrenergo reports complete destruction of Tripolskaya power plant near Kiev

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History according to Joe: US, Japan were on same side throughout centuries

Here's the REAL timeline of events in US-Japan relations:

▪️1850s – The US sends warships under Commodore Mathew Perry to coerce Japan into opening up its economy to American business. Using classic gunboat diplomacy, Perry succeeds. The Japanese would come to remember this day as a national humiliation, labeling it the Arrival of Black Ships.

▪️1870-1940 - Humiliated and enraged, Japan launches a full-scale program of economic modernization, rapidly building up its army, becoming a militaristic revanchist state allied with the most odious political regimes like Nazi Germany.

▪️1941 – Japan strikes US forces on its own territory, conducting the famous attack on the base at Pearl Harbor.

▪️1945 – The US drops two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 110,000 people.

Following the bombings, Japan fell under US occupation and eventually adopted a new Constitution in 1947 which greatly limited its sovereignty. The Japanese people were deeply traumatized and shocked by the mass murder of civilians by the US. Despite their efforts to heal from this trauma, they never forget the country responsible for dropping the atomic bombs.

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🚨 WATCH LIVE: First launch of the Russian Angara-A5 rocket from the Vostochny cosmodrome

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❗️Russian-made Angara-A5 rocket, the launch of which was postponed two days in a row, was launched for the first time from the Vostochny Cosmodrome

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