Syria's former vice-president said in comments published yesterday that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which he is trying to topple, will collapse this year.
"The current regime will fall because of the blunders it has committed both in domestic and and international politics," Dubai's Gulf News daily quoted Abdul Halim Khaddam as saying in an exclusive telephone interview from his self-imposed exile in the Belgian capital Brussels.
"It will definitely happen in 2006," Khaddam told the English-language paper, without saying why he was certain the regime would be ousted so soon.
Khaddam, who helped formulate Syria's foreign policy for nearly three decades, also criticized the late president Hafez Assad, saying he should never have allowed his son to succeed him.
Alleging massive corruption inside the ruling family in Syria, Khaddam said that "currently, there is no way to correct the regime from inside the nation. Bashar is acting like someone who has a farm and wants to manage it on his own. He would not listen to any idea other than those praising him."
Khaddam, 74, broke away from Assad late last year, following growing international pressure over the killing of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri last year, which the UN has blamed on Syria.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
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