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The upcoming summit in Samarkand will bring together for the first time the leaders of the five Central Asian countries and the European Union. Following years of reform and European assistance, the five Central Asian countries - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan - are embarking on a strategic pivot towards Europe. The EU is seeking reliable partners in the current rapidly changing geopolitical reality. This is for political and also economic reasons, such as trade, investment and energy. On Thursday and Friday, the Uzbek city of Samarkand will host the first-ever high level meeting between the EU and the...

Prosecutors argued that Mansuri Manuchekhri's messages with ISIS-affiliated people suggested he may be preparing a violent assault to support the terrorist organisation A Tajikistan man living illegally in the US has been arrested for allegedly helping the terrorist group ISIS. Mansuri Manuchekhri sent $70,000 (over Rs 61 lakh) to people linked to ISIS between December 2021 and April 2023, believing it was going to help the families of dead ISIS fighters, according to reports. During a court hearing in New York's Brooklyn, Manuchekhri was denied bail. Prosecutors argued that his messages with ISIS-affiliated people suggested he may be preparing a...

Citi has fired one of its personal bankers after she defended Hitler and the holocaust in a vile anti-Semitic post following the Hamas terror attacks. CUNY Brooklyn College graduate Nozima Husainova, 25, sparked outrage with the remark which she posted on her now-deleted Instagram page and she's since lost her job, the bank confirmed Thursday. Responding to a post about the Gaza hospital bombing that Israel has denied, she wrote: 'No wonder why Hitler wanted to get rid of them all,' complete with a smiley face emoji.

The Sogdians were an Eastern Iranian-speaking people originally from Sogdiana, or modern-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Traders, artisans, and cultural brokers, their influence peaked during the Tang Dynasty, or roughly from 618 to 907 CE, described as the "Golden Age" of the Silk Road. But until recently, very little has been known about their origins and interaction with other populations.A breakthrough in understanding the Sogdians came from the analysis of two skeletons excavated from a Tang Dynasty tomb, M1401, in Guyuan, northwest China. The tomb was excavated by the Ningxia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in 2014 to prevent...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The person who died when a Tesla Cybertruck packed with explosives burst into flames outside President-elect Donald Trump’s Las Vegas hotel was a highly decorated U.S. Army Green Beret who deployed twice to Afghanistan, officials said Thursday. Two law enforcement officials identified the man inside the futuristic-looking pickup truck as Matthew Livelsberger. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.Livelsberger served in the Green Berets, highly trained special forces who work to counter terrorism abroad and train partners, the Army said in...

Chinese archaeologists have discovered an unidentified cluster of tombs on the Pamirs Plateau, unveiling a new mystery on the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road. Eights tombs, each two meters in diameter, were arranged on a 100-meter-long and 50-meter-wide terrace, with lines of black stones and lines of white stones stretching alongside like rays, according to the archaeology team with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that found the tombs in Xinjiang's Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County, a border region neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, in October. "The tombs are peculiar. No similar ones had been detected before on the Pamirs Plateau,...

The organization, CSTO, is a Russian-led security alliance that includes Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan “Radicals from Central Asia have accounted for a notable share of recent Islamic State-inspired or -directed plots and attacks in the United States, Europe, Turkey, and Iran,” Lucas Webber and Riccardo Valle wrote in a Hudson Institute analysis last year. In September 2022, ISKP – which vehemently opposes Russia’s support for the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria – claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the Russian embassy in Kabul which left six dead. Despite repeatedly warnings from foreign sources – including the U.S....

"It turns out that the Zeravshan Valley, known primarily as a Silk Road route in the Middle Ages, was a key route for human expansion long before that—between 20,000 and 150,000 years ago," explained Prof. Zaidner. "This region may have served as a migration route for several human species, such as modern Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, or Denisovans, which may have coexisted in this area, and our research aims to uncover who were the humans that inhabited these parts of the Central Asia and the nature of their interactions."The archaeological team excavated three areas at Soii Havzak, unearthing layers of human...

China is planning to restrict exports of a key mineral needed to make weapons while a U.S. company that could be reducing America’s reliance on foreign suppliers is languishing in red tape, energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Chinese government announced on August 15 that it will restrict exports of antimony, a critical mineral that dominates the production of weapons globally and is essential for producing equipment like munitions, night vision goggles and bullets that are essential to national security, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Perpetua Resources, an American mining company, has...

Michael Dickson @michaeldickson: Bad sport Nurali Emomali from Tajikistan refused to shake hands with Israeli judo competitor Baruch Shmailov and shouted “Allah Akbar”. Nurali ended up with a dislocated shoulder crying on the mat. Olympic levels of karma. #Olympics 10:04 AM · Jul 28, 2024Link

How FUBAR is Afghanistan? More FUBAR than ever. Details in video. Transcript at link below video.

The number of migrants flocking to the US-Mexico border from a country known as a hotbed of ISIS recruitment has skyrocketed under President Biden. More than 1,500 migrants from Tajikistan are known to have crossed the border between October 2020 and May 2024, according to leaked border dated obtained by The Post. At least 500 Tajiks have been caught so far this year. Over the previous 14 years there were just 26 Tajik nationals crossing the border. It’s unknown how many of the Tajik migrants were released into the US, but the vast majority of migrants caught at the border...

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) — The leader of Armenia on Wednesday declared his intention to pull out of a Russia-dominated security alliance of several ex-Soviet nations as tensions rise between the two allies. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his government will decide later when to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, a grouping that includes Russia and the former Soviet Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Amid the widening rift with Russia, Armenia earlier froze its participation in the alliance, canceled its involvement in joint military drills and snubbed CSTO summits. Pashinyan said Wednesday for the...

The threats are ‘no longer speculative’ and ‘not longer hypothetical,’ Rep. Mike Turner said.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said Sunday that the United States is currently at its “highest level” for the possibility of a terrorist attack occurring on American soil.During an interview with CBS News, Mr. Turner was asked about reports of recent arrests with individuals with ties to the ISIS terrorist group in the United States.“What’s important about these reports and what we’re seeing, especially in conjunction with [FBI] Director [Christopher] Wray’s public statements, that we are at the highest level of a possible terrorist threat,...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Eight people from Tajikistan with suspected ties to the Islamic State group have been arrested in the United States in recent days, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles and the individuals, who entered the U.S. through the southern border, are being held on immigration violations, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation by name and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The nature of their suspected connections to the IS was not immediately clear, but the...

It turns out the Biden administration has released potential terrorists with explosive aspirations into America’s interior. Are we surprised? No. Worried? Heck, yes. On June 11, Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin tweeted that a “federal source” confirmed ICE, working with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, recently arrested eight Tajikistan nationals who entered America illegally and had suspected ISIS ties.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) — Russia began deporting Tajik migrants Tuesday, the first in a wave of expulsions in apparent retaliation for the jailing of a Russian pilot in the Central Asian nation, officials in Tajikistan said. The spat threatens to imperil the livelihood of thousands of Tajik laborers and stir discontent in a country struggling to protect its border with Afghanistan. The former Soviet nation's economy relies heavily on the remittances provided by the many hundreds of thousands of Tajiks working in Russia. Over the past year, Moscow has been attempting to strong-arm Tajikistan into permitting Russian border troops to...

If there's any doubt that open borders are a terrorist's bonanza, the evidence is starting to materialize. According to the New York Post: Six Russian nationals suspected to have terror ties to ISIS have been arrested in a coordinated sting operation spanning Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, The Post can exclusively reveal. Two ICE sources confirmed to The Post they arrested the six people, who hail from Tajikistan, over the last week after the FBI contacted the agency to warn it. Two others who were part of the same group were also arrested after being under surveillance for “several...

Six Russian nationals with potential ties to ISIS have been arrested in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles in a coordinated sting by law enforcement. Two ICE officials have told the New York Post they arrested the suspected terrorist affiliates last week after the FBI raised the alarm. The suspects are originally from Tajikistan, and they also have Russian citizenship, according to the Post. Anonymous ICE officials told the newspaper a wiretap revealed one of the suspects talking about bombs. 'Remember the Boston marathon [bombing]? I'm afraid something like that might happen again or worse,' one official told The Post....

Six Russian nationals suspected to have terror ties to ISIS have been arrested in a coordinated sting operation spanning Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, The Post can exclusively reveal. Two ICE sources confirmed to The Post they arrested the six people, who hail from Tajikistan, over the last week after the FBI contacted the agency to warn it. Part of the investigation featured a wiretap which revealed one of the now-arrested individuals was talking about bombs, the sources said. “Remember the Boston marathon [bombing]? I’m afraid something like that might happen again or worse,” one of the sources told...