DUBAI: Oman reported a record number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in the past 72 hours, with 119 dying from the disease during this period, the newspaper Oman News said on Sunday.
A total of 5,517 people were diagnosed with the virus in the same period, it said.

ROME: Israel has serious reservations about the Iran nuclear deal being put together in Vienna, new foreign minister Yair Lapid told his American counterpart, as he pledged to fix “the mistakes made” between the two countries over the past few years.
In their first face-to-face meeting since Israel’s new government was sworn in two weeks ago, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Lapid said they would also discuss Israel’s normalization accords with Gulf Arab states. Blinken said he would also be raising the issue of humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

Blinken said the US supports Israel’s normalization accords, but they cannot be a substitute for engaging in issues between Israelis and Palestinians.
Iran and the United States have been holding indirect talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and major powers that imposed restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear activities in exchange for lifting international sanctions.
“Israel has some serious reservations about the Iran nuclear deal that is being put together in Vienna. We believe the way to discuss those disagreements is through direct…conversations, not in press conferences,” Lapid said in his brief remarks before the meeting in Rome began. He also said Israel will be working to improve ties with Washington.
“In the past few years, mistakes were made. Israel’s bipartisan standing was hurt and we will fix those mistakes together,” he added.

DUBAI: The speaker of Iran’s parliament said on Sunday Tehran will never hand over images from inside of some Iranian nuclear sites to the UN nuclear watchdog as a monitoring agreement with the agency had expired, Iranian state media reported.
“The agreement has expired … any of the information recorded will never be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency and the data and images will remain in the possession of Iran,” said Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
The announcement could further complicate talks between Iran and six major powers on reviving a 2015 nuclear deal. Three years ago then US President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact and reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran; Iran reacted by violating many of the deal’s restrictions on its nuclear program.
A spokesman for parliament’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee warned that “Iran will also turn off the IAEA cameras if the United States fails to remove all sanctions,” the state-run Tehran Times newspaper’s website reported.
The IAEA and Tehran struck the three-month monitoring agreement in February to cushion the blow of Iran reducing its cooperation with the agency, and it allowed monitoring of some activities that would otherwise have been axed to continue.
Under that agreement, which on May 24 was extended by a month, data continues to be collected in a black-box-type arrangement, with the IAEA only able to access it at a later date.
On Friday, the IAEA demanded an immediate reply from Iran on whether it would extend the monitoring agreement, prompting an Iranian envoy to respond that Tehran was under no obligation to provide an answer.
Iran said on Wednesday the country’s Supreme National Security Council would decide whether to renew the monitoring agreement only after it expires.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that any failure by Tehran to extend the monitoring agreement would be a “serious concern” for broader negotiations.
Parties involved in the talks on reviving the deal, which began in April in Vienna, have said there are major issues still to be resolved before the nuclear deal can be reinstated. 

RIYADH: Yemen’s president left for the United States on Saturday to undergo periodic medical examinations, state news agency SABA reported.

President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has lived in Riyadh since the Iranian-backed Houthi militia captured the Yemeni capital Sanaa in 2015.

CAIRO: A national indicator of multidimensional poverty should be formulated that reflects the Egyptian situation, based on realistic data and accurate indicators, according to Egypt’s deputy minister of planning and economic development Ahmed Kamali.

He was speaking during a remote technical session attended by the working group of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), represented by Khaled Abu Ismail, and representatives from UNICEF and Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics to discuss the formulation of the multidimensional poverty index (MPI) in Egypt.

Kamali praised the cooperation between international bodies and efforts made over recent months to eradicate poverty.

The ESCWA team gave a presentation on how to use the MPI Assist Tool (MAT) to present the results in a simplified manner to decision-makers, which would also facilitate the process of measuring the MPI for countries.

This session marked the conclusion of a number of meetings and workshops that started during November 2020 between the Egyptian Ministry of Planning and Economic Development’s task force, ESCWA, and the Oxford University’s Poverty and Development Initiative Humanity’s task force.

The meetings discussed ways to measure the MPI in Egypt and the factors affecting the formulation of this indicator, as well as relying on it in formulating policies related to combating poverty.