DUBAI, May 25 (Reuters) - Iran's top negotiator in talks with the United States, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, has been reelected as the country's parliamentary speaker, semi-official Fars news agency reported on Monday.
(Reporting by Elwely Elwelly;Editing by Alison Williams)
Marco Rubio leads US foreign policy as diplomacy on Iran goes down to the wire, but he is also making time for cultural attractions as divergent as the Taj Mahal and the Village People.
Rubio, who serves as President Donald Trump's secretary of state and national security advisor, took a day for sightseeing in India on Monday, touring the Taj Mahal, the renowned monument to love.
"It's one of the wonders of the world," Rubio said of the imposing mausoleum in Agra.
"I think it's important to show respect to the culture of the countries that you visit."
The Israeli army intensified strikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he had ordered the military to escalate its offensive in an effort to "crush" Hezbollah.
The airstrikes come as the United States and Iran seek to finalise the terms of an agreement to end the Middle East conflict, which could include the Lebanon front, where Israel and Hezbollah have waged war since March 2.
Despite a ceasefire that came into effect on April 17, Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have continued to exchange fire on a near-daily basis.
Over 1.5 million Muslims began filling a vast tent city in the holy city of Mecca on Monday for an annual hajj pilgrimage carried out against the backdrop of hopes for an end to the war in the Middle East.
The white-robed pilgrims on buses or on foot arrived at the sprawling encampment in Mina after performing the "tawaf" -- walking seven times around the Kaaba, the giant black cube at Mecca's Grand Mosque.
(Corrects name of political analyst in seventh paragraph)
By Xinghui Kok and Greg Torode
SINGAPORE/HONG KONG, May 25 (Reuters) - War in Iran, strained U.S. commitments in Asia and rising tensions over Taiwan will likely dominate the agenda at this week's annual Shangri-La Dialogue, the region's premier defence forum.
The free-wheeling informal gathering, running from May 29 to 31, draws an eclectic mix of ministers, generals, intelligence chiefs, diplomats, analysts and weapons makers for carefully worded speeches and frank exchanges behind polished hotel doors.
WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, May 25 (Reuters) - The United States will either have a good agreement with Iran or deal with the country "another way," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday, as Washington played down hopes for an imminent breakthrough in the three-month-old war.
Rubio told reporters in New Delhi that the U.S. would give diplomacy every chance to succeed before exploring "alternatives", after President Donald Trump said on Sunday he had told his representatives not to rush into any Iran deal.
Born to landless Indian farmers, Sunil Pooniya thought a job at sea would be his ticket out of poverty, instead his first voyage saw him diving into the ocean to escape a deadly attack driven by the Iran war.
For hundreds of thousands of Indians, merchant shipping jobs are a lucrative proposition despite the inherent risks.
The attack on Pooniya's ship killed two fellow Indians -- the country's sailors are among the highest merchant maritime casualties from the Middle East war.
By Christine Chen
SYDNEY, May 25 (Reuters) - Antisemitism in Australia was left unchecked after the October 2023 outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war, fuelling violence against Jewish people, the country's spy chief told an inquiry into the Bondi Beach mass shooting on Monday.
The comments came during public hearings in the wide-ranging inquiry known as a Royal Commission that focus on the events leading up to last December's Bondi attack, which killed 15 attending a Jewish Hanukkah celebration.
By Saad Sayeed and Mubasher Bukhari
CHAKWAL, Pakistan, May 25 (Reuters) - In a cluster of villages in Pakistan's largely rural Chakwal district, more than 100 Shi'ite Muslims have returned from the United Arab Emirates without jobs, luggage or access to the savings they spent years building abroad.
They are among potentially thousands of Shi'ites deported from the UAE to Pakistan during the Iran war, raising alarm in Pakistan's Shi'ite community and prompting Human Rights Watch to investigate.
May 25 (Reuters) - Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday the U.S. will either have a good agreement with Iran or deal with the country "another way."
The U.S. will give diplomacy every chance to succeed before exploring the "alternatives," Rubio told reporters in New Delhi.
There is a "pretty solid thing on the table in terms of their ability to open up the strait, get the strait open, enter into a very real, significant, time-limited negotiation on the nuclear matter, and hopefully we can pull it off," Rubio said.
