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WASHINGTON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with US Vice President Kamala Harris this week during his visit to Washington, an aide to Harris told AFP on Monday.
The White House meeting will be separate from President Joe Biden’s planned sit-down with Netanyahu, the aide said, and comes after Harris looks set to replace Biden atop the Democratic ticket following his shock end to his reelection bid.
TEHRAN: Two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were killed Sunday while attempting to defuse explosives in an area of the country’s west hit by Israeli strikes last month, Iranian media reported.
Israel and Iran fought a 12-day war sparked by an Israeli bombing campaign on June 13. The strikes, according to Israel, were aimed at preventing the Islamic republic from developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Tehran has consistently denied.
Tasnim news agency, citing a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that “two members of the Guards were killed Sunday in Khorramabad while clearing the area of explosives left by the Zionist regime’s aggression.”
The Israeli strikes during the war killed key commanders of Iran’s armed forces, including Guards, as well as top nuclear scientists.
The strikes killed more than 900 people across Iran, its judiciary has said, while retaliatory Iranian missile barrages killed at least 28 people in Israel, according to official figures.
A ceasefire between the two arch-foes took effect on June 24.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday made his first public appearance since the war broke out, state media reported, taking part in a religious ceremony in Tehran.
Iran announced the reopening of its airspace on Thursday, including over Tehran, which had been closed since the first day of the war.
ZAGREB: A hugely popular right-wing Croatian singer and hundreds of thousands of his fans performed a pro-Nazi World War II salute at a massive concert in Zagreb, drawing criticism.
One of Marko Perkovic’s most popular songs, played in the late Staurday concert, starts with the dreaded “For the homeland — Ready!” salute, used by Croatia’s Nazi-era puppet Ustasha regime that ran concentration camps at the time.
Perkovic, whose stage name is Thompson after a US-made machine gun, had previously said both the song and the salute focus on the 1991-95 ethnic war in Croatia, in which he fought using the American firearm, after the country declared independence from the former Yugoslavia. He says his controversial song is “a witness of an era.”
The 1990s conflict erupted when rebel minority Serbs, backed by neighboring Serbia, took up guns, intending to split from Croatia and unite with Serbia.
Perkovic’s immense popularity in Croatia reflects prevailing nationalist sentiments in the country 30 years after the war ended.
The WWII Ustasha troops in Croatia brutally killed tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma and antifascist Croats in a string of concentration camps in the country. Despite documented atrocities, some nationalists still view the Ustasha regime leaders as founders of the independent Croatian state.
Organizers said that half a million people attended Perkovic’s concert in the Croatian capital. Video footage aired by Croatian media showed many fans displaying pro-Nazi salutes earlier in the day.
The salute is punishable by law in Croatia, but courts have ruled Perkovic can use it as part of his song, the Croatian state television HRT said.
Perkovic has been banned from performing in some European cities over frequent pro-Nazi references and displays at his gigs.
Croatia’s Vecernji List daily wrote that the concert’s “supreme organization” has been overshadowed by the use of the salute of a regime that signed off on “mass executions of people.”
Regional N1 television noted that whatever the modern interpretations of the salute may be its roots are “undoubtedly” in the Ustasha regime era.
N1 said that while “Germans have made a clear cut” from anything Nazi-related “to prevent crooked interpretations and the return to a dark past ... Croatia is nowhere near that in 2025.”
In neighboring Serbia, populist President Aleksandar Vucic criticized Perkovic’s concerts as a display “of support for pro-Nazi values.” Former Serbian liberal leader Boris Tadic said it was a “great shame for Croatia” and “the European Union” because the concert “glorifies the killing of members of one nation, in this case Serbian.”
Croatia joined the EU in 2013.
Croatian police said Perkovic’s concert was the biggest ever in the country and an unseen security challenge, deploying thousands of officers.
No major incidents were reported.
SEOUL: South Korean special prosecutors on Sunday filed a request to detain former President Yoon Suk Yeol on charges related to insurrection from when he declared martial law last year, the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
“Detention request is related to allegations of abuse of power and obstruction of justice,” the statement from the special counsel of prosecutors investigating the December 3 incident said.
Yoon’s martial law decree was lifted about six hours after it was announced when lawmakers, who had been forced to scale the walls of the assembly building to make it through a ring of security forces, voted the decree down.
Yoon was summoned on Saturday for hours of questioning by the special counsel as part of the probe over the insurrection charges, according to the counsel officials.
Yoon’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment on Sunday.
VIENNA: Switzerland, which also represents US interests in Iran, has reopened its embassy in Tehran after a closure due to the air war between Israel and Iran, the Swiss foreign ministry said on Sunday.
“Ambassador Nadine Olivieri Lozano and a small team returned to Tehran yesterday overland via Azerbaijan. The embassy will gradually resume operations,” the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. It had been closed since June 20.
