RIYADH, JUN 21: The Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has begun issuing Umrah visas for the post-Hajj season, according to the Saudi Press Agency.

The issuance of Umrah visas follows the completion of the annual pilgrimage to Hajj on Wednesday.

The ministry announced that it is diligently executing the directives of the leadership to accommodate an increased number of Hajj and Umrah pilgrims and provide services that meet their requirements and aspirations.

The ministry ceased issuing Umrah permits through the Nusuk application for a duration of one month commencing on May 23. This was aimed at enabling Hajj pilgrims, who began flocking to Makkah from all over the world, to perform their rituals in ease and comfort.

The ministry announced that the Nusuk App would resume issuing Umrah visas from Zilhajj 15, corresponding to June 21.

In its recent statement, the ministry stated that the resumption of the issuance of Umrah visas would facilitate the seamless arrival of Umrah pilgrims into the Kingdom. This annual initiative follows immediately following the Hajj season.

The ministry stated in a statement that it leverages its expertise and establishes technical and field programs to serve Hajj and Umrah pilgrims and facilitate their rituals.

LONDON, June 21 (AFP/APP): Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Thursday he was “incredibly angry” after more Conservative Party figures were put under investigation over alleged bets placed on the UK general election date.

Facing questions on the growing scandal from an audience of voters on live television, the beleaguered leader said any election candidates or officials found to have broken rules would be kicked out of the party.

His comments came hours after the Conservatives’ campaign director stepped aside following reports that he and his wife, a Tory candidate in the July 4 election, were under investigation by betting regulators.

Last week, another would-be MP, Craig Williams, who was a Sunak ministerial aide, was also being probed for staking £100 ($127) on the date before it was called.

London police said Wednesday that one of the prime minister’s police security detail had been arrested for allegedly placing a bet on the date.

“I was incredibly angry… to learn of these allegations,” Sunak said of the cases involving his party officials.

“If anyone is found to have broken the rules, not only should they face the full consequences of the law, I will make sure that they are booted out of the Conservative Party,” he added.

– ‘Astonishing’ – 

The Conservatives confirmed earlier that campaign director Tony Lee had started “a leave of absence” and that the Gambling Commission was looking into “a number of individuals”.

The regulator did not name individuals but the BBC reported that Lee and his election candidate wife Laura Saunders were under investigation.

Her lawyers said she would “be co-operating with the Gambling Commission” and claimed the report infringed her privacy rights.

The commission had already said it was looking at the claims regarding Williams.

Political bets are allowed in the UK, including on the date of elections, but using insider knowledge to do so is against the law.

The inquiries heap further misery on Sunak, whose party has trailed Labour by about 20 points in the polls for nearly two years, making it odds on to be dumped out of office after 14 years.

Labour’s campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden wrote to Sunak arguing the claims showed “a pattern of behaviour” by the Tories focused on making “a quick profit”.

Opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, tipped to become prime minister, has urged Sunak to withdraw support for those allegedly involved.

“It’s astonishing that we’re in this place… Rishi Sunak just needs to take action. He needs to account for exactly who knew what,” he said.

But at Thursday’s debate, Sunak insisted it was “right” that the probes were conducted “thoroughly” and “confidentially” before anyone is sanctioned.

“The integrity of that process should be respected,” he said.

– Wipe-out? –

Sunak announced the date of the election on May 22, in a rain-soaked statement outside Downing Street, taking his own party by surprise as he still had six months to call a vote.

Critics lambasted him for not using an umbrella and the campaign has hardly shifted the dial in his favour since, even with indications the British economy has turned a corner.

This week, he was ignored by a flock of sheep as he tried to feed them in southwest England while his personal ratings suffered after he left early from a D-Day 80th anniversary commemoration event.

Two polls published on Wednesday predicted a record win for Labour, eclipsing even the landslide victory for Labour’s Tony Blair in 1997.

Pollsters YouGov said the Conservatives could slump to their “lowest seat tally in the party’s almost 200-year history”.

Sunak could even become the first sitting prime minister to lose his own seat, according to a Savanta survey.

London police said a member of the Royalty and Specialist Protection Command, was held on Monday on suspicion of misconduct in a public office, then released on bail.

The allegations against Williams came to light last week. He is alleged to have placed a bet on a July date for the election three days before Sunak called the vote.

Seoul, June 21 (AFP/APP): Seoul’s military said Friday it had fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the heavily fortified border in the third such incursion this month.

The nuclear-armed North has been reinforcing the border in recent months, adding tactical roads and laying more landmines, which has led to “casualties” among its troops due to accidental explosions, South Korea has said.

On Thursday morning, “several North Korean soldiers who were working inside the DMZ on the central front line crossed the Military Demarcation Line,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

“After our military’s warning broadcasts and warning shots, the North Korean soldiers retreated back northward,” they added.

Similar incidents took place on June 9 and Tuesday this week, with Seoul’s military saying both incursions appeared to be accidental.

Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Kim Jong Un hosting Russian leader Vladimir Putin this week, and signing a mutual defence agreement that has raised hackles in Seoul.

In response, the South — a major weapons exporter — has said it will “reconsider” a longstanding policy that has prevented it from supplying arms directly to Ukraine.

“While attention is focused on Putin’s pariah partnerships, the Kim regime is recklessly endangering soldiers with rushed construction work at the inter-Korean border,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

The work is likely aimed “as much at keeping their countrymen in as it is at keeping the South Koreans out,” he said, but warned that “a lack of inter-Korean communication channels and confidence-building mechanisms increases the danger of escalation in border areas.”

 – Balloon war –

The two Koreas have also been locked in a tit-for-tat “balloon war”, with an activist in the South confirming Friday that he had floated more balloons carrying propaganda north.

The move is likely to trigger a response from Pyongyang, which has already sent more than a thousand of its own balloons carrying trash southward.

Kim’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong, a top regime spokesperson, said Friday that “dirty tissues and items” had been detected near the border after the launches and warned the North was likely to respond.

“It’s obvious that something will happen now that they did something we clearly told them not to do,” she said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Legally, Seoul cannot prevent activists from sending balloons across the border due to a 2023 court ruling that bans represent an unjustifiable infringement on free speech.

Activist Park Sang-hak, who defected from North Korea and has been sending anti-regime leaflets north for years, said he floated 20 balloons laden with propaganda as well as flash drives with K-pop and television dramas across the border on Thursday.

The North is extremely sensitive about its people accessing South Korean pop culture, with a United Nations report saying possession of large amounts of such content has been known to result in the death penalty.

Activist Park said there was a “bit of friction” with city officials in Paju — the area where the balloons were launched — but he vowed not to call off his campaign unless Kim Jong Un “apologises” for sending trash.

Tensions over the duelling propaganda have previously boiled over in dramatic fashion.

In 2020, blaming the anti-North leaflets, Pyongyang unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with Seoul and blew up a disused inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.

WASHINGTON, Jun 21 (DNA): The United States support “direct discussions” between India and Pakistan, saying the two neighbouring countries should work out the mode for the talks themselves, State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller has said.

“We value our important relationships with both India and Pakistan,”  he said in response to a question from a Pakistani TV channel reporter at his daily news briefing on Thursday.

“As we have said, we support direct discussions between India and Pakistan, but the pace, scope and character should be determined by those two countries, not by us,”  Miller  added.

Relations between India and Pakistan have deteriorated since August 5, 2019, when New Delhi unilaterally annexed the disputed Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, leading to heightened tensions between them. Official talks between the two countries have remained suspended since then.

Answering another question, he stated, “US and Pakistan both have a common goal of addressing regional security threats.”

“We partner with Pakistan on security through our high-level counter-terrorism dialogue, including several counter-terrorism capacity building programmes, and we support a series of US-Pakistan military-to-military engagements,” Miller said.

“We are in regular communication with Pakistani leaders as a part of our partnership on CT issues, and we will continue to discuss regional security in detail, including through our annual counter-terrorism dialogue and other bilateral consultations,” he added.

KOLKATA, JUN 18: India will launch an investigation on Tuesday into a train collision that killed nine people in the state of West Bengal and injured more than 50, a day after a top railway official blamed the incident on driver error.

The death toll was revised down to nine from 15 after Monday’s accident, in which a freight train rammed into a passenger train heading for the state capital of Kolkata from the northeastern state of Tripura.

The investigation by India’s top railway safety official will start on Tuesday, Chetan Kumar Shrivastava, general manager of the Northeast Frontier railway, where the accident happened, told Reuters.

“The inquiry will involve eye-witness accounts, scrutiny of official documents and statements from railway officials, regarding signalling and other mandatory safety issues,” he added.

On Monday, India’s top railway official said the driver of the freight train, who was among the dead, disregarded a signal, leading to the crash with the Kanchanjunga Express, which had halted near a railway station in the district of Darjeeling.

There were 1,400 people aboard, a railway spokesperson said.

But media said an automatic signalling system had not been working from Monday morning, prompting authorities to advise train drivers to proceed slower than usual, in a process known as “paper signals”.

India’s opposition leaders criticised the railway safety record of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, attributing it to negligence.

The incident came a little over a year after about 288 people were killed in one of India’s worst rail crashes in the neighbouring state of Odisha, caused by a signalling error.

State-run Indian Railways, notorious for overcrowding, is the world’s fourth largest train network, carrying 13 million people a day, along with nearly 1.5 billion tonnes of freight in 2022.

In remarks to media on Monday, top railway official Jaya Varma Sinha, who chairs India’s railway board, called for human error to be redued, adding that an anti-collision system was being set up nationwide.

Partial services resumed on the affected tracks on Tuesday, with some trains diverted and others running slower than usual, railway officials said.