PARIS: Turkiye has said it cannot host a major UN biodiversity meeting in 2024 as it reels from a series of devastating earthquakes this year, according to the UN body that oversees the talks.

The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity said the Turkish government had decided to withdraw from presiding over the COP16 meeting “due to a force majeure situation created by the three destructive earthquakes that occurred in February 2023.”

IRBIL, Iraqi Kurdistan: Shortly after midnight on Aug. 3, 2014, heavily armed Daesh extremists swept into the Yazidi homeland of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq, rounding up the civilian population to slaughter them or take them into captivity.

Daesh deliberately targeted the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest ethnoreligious minorities, because it considered them apostates for their religious traditions. Nine years later, the survivors are still coming to terms with what happened.

RIYADH: The secretary-general of the Gulf Cooperation Council stressed the importance of the strategic partnership between the bloc and the US in enhancing maritime security in the region and securing freedom of maritime navigation on Thursday.

BEIRUT: Employees of Lebanon’s state-owned television channel Tele Liban began an open-ended strike on Thursday in a dispute over salaries and unpaid social assistance.

Work in the news and program departments stopped. However, technicians continued to broadcast recorded music “to keep this station on the Lebanese media map,” an employee said.

Mirna Chidiac, head of the Tele Liban employees syndicate, told Arab New that the strike follows a long series of reviews and “failed attempts to receive our dues.”

Egypt and Turkiye are confident of a breakthrough in levels of industrial cooperation following talks between senior ministers.

Ahmed Samir, the Egyptian minister of trade and industry, met with Mehmet Fatih Kacir, the Turkish minister of industry and technology, to discuss greater technical, professional and technological cooperation, including the possibility of establishing a Turkish industrial zone in Egypt.

The meeting took place during the Egyptian minister’s visit at the head of a high-level delegation to the Ankara.