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The Trump administration confirms that US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff will travel to Muscat on Sunday for the sixth round of nuclear talks with Iran. Talks will be both direct and indirect, as in previous rounds, says a statement to reporters attributed to a source familiar.

SummaryEight OPEC+ members met online OPEC+ cites steady economic outlook, healthy fundamentals Started unwinding output cuts in April For more detail on OPEC+ unwinding its cuts, see Explainer LONDON/MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters) - The world’s largest group of oil producers, OPEC+, stuck to its guns on Saturday with another big increase of 411,000 barrels per day for July as it looks to wrestle back market share and punish over-producers. Having spent years curbing production - more than 5 million barrels a day (bpd) or 5% of world demand - eight OPEC+ countries made an modest output increase in April before...

Phys.org reports that a pair of rare copper-alloy Bronze Age cymbals were uncovered at a site in Oman. The instrument has highlighted a shared musical connection between ancient cultures on both sides of the Arabian Gulf. “These cymbals are the first of their kind to have been found in good archaeological contexts in Oman and are from a particularly early context that questions some of the assumptions on their origin and development," said archaeologist Khaled Douglas. When the objects were first recovered from a third-millennium b.c. Umm an-Nar culture site in Dahwa, experts recognized their similarity to examples that had...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke via phone on Tuesday with US President Donald Trump, the American leader said, declaring that the pair “are on the same side of every issue.” The call covered “numerous subjects including Trade, Iran, etc.,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, adding that the conversation went “very well.” Notably, Trump did not include Gaza or the 59 hostages being held there in his list of topics discussed amid the ongoing impasse in ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas. However, according to a report in Axios, the pair did talk about efforts to reach...

"Bad things" will happen to Iran unless it reaches a deal with the U.S. on its nuclear program, President Trump said Friday. -snip- "Iran is very high on my list of things to watch. ... We will have to talk it out or very bad things are gonna happen to Iran, and I don't want that to happen," Trump said. "My big preference is that we work it out with Iran, but if we don't work it out, bad, bad things are gonna happen to Iran." -snip- Trump delivered his letter to the Iranian supreme leader through the UAE signaling...

Iran has sent a response through Oman to US President Donald Trump’s letter that had urged it to reach a new nuclear deal, the state news agency IRNA reports, citing the Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi. Tehran reiterated its stance on not negotiating directly while under pressure, but is open to indirect talks, Araqchi is reported as saying.

The transfer is the largest yet during the Biden administration. ... In a major development, the Pentagon on Monday announced the transfer 11 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay to Oman, a move that now leaves only 15 detainees still at the detention facility. "The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility," said a DOD statement. In recent weeks, the Pentagon had transferred out four other detainees from Guantanamo including a detainee who was brought to...

The outgoing Biden-Harris administration gave Iran $10 billion in sanctions relief just days after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, despite Iran’s ongoing attacks against Israel and support for terrorist organizations. The Washington Free Beacon reported: Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined on November 8 that “it is in the national security interest of the United States” to waive mandatory economic sanctions that bar Iraq from transferring upward of $10 billion to Iran in electricity import payments. … Though the first Trump administration did green-light the same waiver—causing tension with some congressional Republicans—it narrowly tailored the waiver to restrict...

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi reportedly replaced his trusted spy chief on Wednesday who has played a key role in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas.According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, Abbas Kamel was considered the second-most powerful person in Egypt for years and during his tenure, built strong relationships with officials in US and Israeli intelligence, as well as leaders of the Hamas terror group.Kamel will now serve as a special advisor to Sissi and coordinator of the security services, but the WSJ noted that it was unclear whether the reassignment was a promotion or demotion...

The delegation sought to deliver messages to Tehran in order to de-escalate the tensions in the region between Iran and Israel. An unnamed source in Iran's Supreme National Security Council told Kuwaiti newspaper al Jarida that a high-ranking American security delegation, mediated by Oman, secretly traveled to Tehran, the Kuwaiti paper wrote on Wednesday. Fox News reported that the delegation allegedly sought to deliver messages to Tehran in order to de-escalate the tensions in the region between Iran and Israel, al Jarida noted in their reporting of the story… Allegedly, the American delegation presented a list with the names of...

Senior officials from the Biden administration held indirect talks last week with the Iranian regime in the Gulf state of Oman to avoid “escalation” in the region — even as Iran’s proxies continue to attack Israel and global shipping. The effort is one of few diplomatic meetings between the U.S. and Iran, and recalls the secret meetings between President Barack Obama’s envoys and the Iranian regime in Oman in 2013 that set the stage for the Iran nuclear deal.

This was the first round of discussions between the two countries since January. The talks were mediated by Omani officials, with this occurring nearly over a month. Iranian officials held indirect talks with two Biden administration officials this week in Oman to de-escalate attacks in the Middle East, sources of the talks told Axios and Walla on Friday. The two officials from the Biden administration were Brett McGurk, the US president's top Middle East adviser, and Abram Paley, who is the US envoy for Iran. The US made it clear to the Iranians what the consequences of their and their...

The desert nation of the United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Wednesday from the heaviest rain ever recorded there after a deluge flooded out Dubai International Airport, disrupting flights through the world's busiest airfield for international travel. The state-run WAM news agency called the rain Tuesday “a historic weather event” that surpassed “anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949.” That's before the discovery of crude oil in this energy-rich nation then part of a British protectorate known as the Trucial States. Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, the rains were acute...

Was Dubai's apocalyptic storm SELF-INFLICTED? Claims UAE 'flew cloud-seeding flights - which increase rainfall - the day before' 18 months' rain fell in 24 hours causing chaos that closed airport and sparked rush to flee the country The United Arab Emirates is today attempting to dry out after the heaviest rain ever recorded in the desert nation caused utter chaos - but there are suspicions the horrific flooding in Dubai and elsewhere may have been self-inflicted. The typically scorching UAE heavily relies on cloud-seeding - a technique which sees aircraft fire salt flares into clouds to speed up condensation and...

The United Arab Emirates and neighboring states were rocked this week by the heaviest rains on record, which resulted in devastating floods, dozens of deaths, significant damage, and diverted flights. A government meteorologist indicated early on that the UAE's well-known geoengineering efforts were at least partly to blame. However, now that there is a body count, the government task force responsible for cloud-seeding missions in the region is attempting to deny responsibility. Liberal media outlets such as the Guardian and Wired and so-called experts have dutifully accepted these denials, insinuating that climate change or other factors may instead be responsible....

The record-breaking rain that fell over the United Arab Emirates and Oman this month, triggering deadly floods and chaos, was driven partly by the climate crisis, according to a scientific analysis published Thursday, which pointed directly at humans burning fossil fuels.A team of 21 scientists and researchers, under the World Weather Attribution initiative, found that climate change was making extreme rainfall events in the two countries — which typically fall during El Niño years — between 10 and 40% more intense than they would have been without global warming.Over a period of less than 24 hours between April 14 and...

.....makes modern Oman the oldest 11:45 continuously independent state in the 11:47 Arab world today having remained largely 11:49 independent ever since then right up 11:51 until the modern day from there the 11:53 omanis utilized their centuries of 11:55 previous ship and trade experience and 11:56 everything they learned from the 11:57 Portuguese to then pursue the Portuguese 11:59 Empire across the rest of the Indian 12:01 Ocean and in the process the omanis 12:03 created a vast Maritime Empire of their 12:06....

Is there anything Joe Biden can't do?Get a load of what he funded in his latest bloated budget spending bill passed last week, according to Breitbart News, which opened the hood of that jalopy:Slipped into a $1.2 trillion budget signed by Biden last weekend is about $380 million for “enhanced border security” projects in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, and Tunisia — about $150 million of which must go to border security in Jordan.Meanwhile, the budget puts strict limitations on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) ability to construct physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border to deter illegal immigration.“The Biden administration...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw3j__MaTUQ [snip] In this video I talk about the Ainu, the indigenous people from the northern region of Japan, their culture, genetic profile, and ancestry. They are well known as the ethnic group that appears in manga series "Golden Kamuy."Data Source: Wang, CC., Yeh, HY., Popov, A.N. et al. Genomic insights into the formation of human populations in East Asia. Nature 591, 413–419 (2021). [/snip]DNA Analyses and Genetic Origins of the Ainu | 9:05Decimali | 5.93K subscribers | 475,461 views | September 30, 2023

Pro-Hamas rally in Iraq, October 14In 2008, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri bizarrely castigated Hamas, saying that their "blessed Qassam rockets" do not differentiate between Israeli soldiers who are legitimate targets, and children and Arabs who are not.Hamas was embarrassed at being given a morality lesson from Al Qaeda, and it went on to deny that they targeted civilians, saying all of their rockets were only aimed at military sites.After that incident, Hamas press releases on their rocket fire changed the names of the targets from "settlements" to "military bases" that has the same names - like "military base Sderot"...