Reuters

Portugal’s top court blocks bill restricting immigration

LISBON: Portugal’s Constitutional Court has blocked a bill approved by the right-wing parliamentary majority that was designed to limit the inflow of immigrants, citing obstacles it creates for family members in joining immigrants legally resident in Portugal.

Immediately after late Friday’s decision, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa sent the bill back to parliament, which is on recess until September. Last month, the president told the court to check the document for potential infringements of the principles of equality, proportionality and legal security.

The bill illustrates the rightward shift in politics in much of Europe, as governments try to fend off the rise of the far-right by being tougher on immigration.

The bill would have made hundreds of thousands of migrants legally resident in Portugal wait for two years before they could request permission for immediate family members to join them. Only highly-skilled workers and investors with special residence permits would be exempt.

The court ruled that the bill was “likely to lead to the separation of family members” of foreign citizens legally resident in Portugal, which it said would be a “violation of the rights enshrined in the constitution”.

Last year, the government scrapped a programme that allowed migrants entering Portugal on a tourist visa or waiver to stay and get residence permits if they find work.

Immigrants from the Community of Portuguese Language Countries still enjoy most such privileges but the bill would impose the requirement of a long-term work or residence visa that they would need to apply for in the country of origin.

Parliament approved the bill on July 16 with support from the centre-right ruling coalition and far-right Chega party, which emerged as the second-largest parliamentary force in a May general election.

Left-wing opposition parties have criticised the government for what they call an inhumane bill, and for allowing Chega to impose its anti-immigration agenda on the minority administration.

The government denies such accusations, arguing that immigration inflows require better controls, and has already said it intends to adjust the bill to the court’s objections.

August 10, 2025
Messi will not travel for Sunday’s match

August 9, 2025: Inter Miami superstar Lionel Messi will not travel for Sunday’s match at Orlando City due to a “minor” muscle injury in his right leg, coach Javier Mascherano said Saturday.

Messi sustained the injury during last weekend’s Leagues Cup match against Necaxa. There is no timeline for the forward’s return.

“No, Leo will not be available tomorrow,” Mascherano said Saturday, per ESPN. “Leo is OK, but obviously it would be crazy to take the risk of taking him to Orlando because of all that is ahead. We are optimistic that he will soon return with us.”

Messi, 38, entered this weekend with 18 goals, tied with Sam Surridge of Nashville SC for the lead in the chase for the Golden Boot. The Argentina native also has nine assists in 18 MLS matches (17 starts) this season.

After visiting Orlando City, the Herons will host Los Angeles FC next Saturday before facing Tigres UANL in the Leagues Cup quarterfinals on Aug. 20 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Football- Soccer News from Around The World

August 9, 2025
Israel signs $35 billion natural gas supply deal with Egypt

LONDON: Israel’s Leviathan natural gas field has signed the largest export agreement in the country’s history, worth up to $35 billion to supply gas to Egypt, NewMed, one of the partners in the field has said.

The deal should ease an energy crisis in Egypt, which has spent billions of dollars on importing liquefied natural gas since its own supplies fell short of demand.

Egypt’s production began declining in 2022, it has increasingly turned to Israel to make up the shortfall.

Exports from the gas field were halted during a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June but have since resumed.

Under the deal announced on Thursday, Leviathan, off Israel’s Mediterranean coast, with reserves of some 600 billion cubic metres, will sell about 130 bcm of gas to Egypt through 2040, or until all of the contract quantities are fulfilled.

The gas is pumped via pipelines, which makes it cheaper than LNG, the cost of which is inflated by the super-cooling required to make it a liquid that can be transported by ship and re-gasifying it when it reaches its destination.

Egypt’s Ministry of Petroleum, which is also responsible for energy imports, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Analysts estimate the average cost of LNG at $13.5 per million British thermal units (mmBtu), compared to $7.75 for Israeli gas. That excludes the cost of leasing floating storage (FSRUs).

Under the deal, Leviathan in a first stage will supply Egypt with 20 bcm of gas starting in early 2026 after the connection of additional pipelines.

It will export the remaining 110 bcm in a second phase that will begin after completion of the expansion project and the construction of a new transmission pipeline from Israel to Egypt via Nitzana in Israel, NewMed said.

Egypt has been struggling to get its gas production up. According to latest figures, production reached 3,545 million cubic meters in May, compared to 6,133 mcm in March 2021 – a decline of over 42% in less than five years.

The Leviathan reservoir began supplying Egypt shortly after production began in 2020. The field, operated by Chevron, which holds a 40% stake, also supplies Jordan.

August 9, 2025
Ireland to pass trade ban on Israeli settlements despite US pressure

Ireland will continue to advance legislation banning the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris has said.

More than a dozen members of the US Congress had called on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to add Ireland to a list of countries boycotting Israel if the Occupied Territories Bill is passed by Dublin.

But Harris said Ireland’s government remains undeterred and “isn’t alone” in carrying out the measures.

“This week we also saw Slovenia take action in relation to trade from the occupied territories, I expect Belgium are likely to do the same and we intend to advance with our legislation,” Harris told reporters on Friday.

“People in Ireland, people in Europe and people right across the world feel extraordinarily strongly about the genocidal activity that we’re seeing in Gaza, about the starving children and we will use all tools at our disposal,” he added.

Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund will also announce changes to the handling of its Israeli investments, Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday, ruling out any blanket withdrawal over the war in Gaza.

Read More: Israel approves plan to take control of Gaza

The fund itself said it would provide an update on its Israeli investments on Tuesday. The government this week launched an urgent review of the investments over ethics concerns linked to the war in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

“I see several measures over time, but what can be addressed quickly, must be done quickly,” Stoltenberg told a press conference after holding his second meeting with fund officials in three days.

He did not say what these measures could be, but added that there would not be a wholesale divestment from all Israeli companies. “If we did that, it would mean we are divesting from them because they are Israeli,” he said.

August 9, 2025
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Saturday marks the 80th anniversary of the U.S. military’s dropping of an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, three days after the bombing of Hiroshima ushered in the age of nuclear weapons.

Following are some facts about the bombings, the only times nuclear weapons have been used in war. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending its role in World War Two.

HIROSHIMA:
- At 8.15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, an American B-29 Superfortress bomber called Enola Gay dropped a 10,000-pound uranium-235 bomb, instantly killing about 78,000 people. By the end of that year, the number of dead reached about 140,000.
- The bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”, exploded about 580 metres (1,900 feet) above the centre of the city, setting off a surge of heat reaching 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,200 degrees Fahrenheit) across a radius of about 4.5 km (2.8 miles). More than half of the city’s buildings lay in ruins.
NAGASAKI:
- At 11.02 a.m. on August 9, the United States dropped a 10,000-pound plutonium-239 bomb, nicknamed “Fat Man”.
- It exploded about 500 metres above the ground, instantly killing about 27,000 of the city’s estimated population of around 200,000. By the end of 1945, the number of dead due to acute radiation exposure reached about 70,000.
TOTAL KILLED:
- Japan has so far recognised the total number of deaths from the bombings, including from radiation illness and injuries, as 344,306 in Hiroshima (as of August 6, 2024) and 198,785 in Nagasaki (as of August 9, 2024).
August 9, 2025
Trump announces peace agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia

Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement on Friday during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump that would boost bilateral economic ties after decades of conflict and move them toward a full normalization of their relations.

The deal between the South Caucasus rivals – assuming it holds – would be a significant accomplishment for the Trump administration that is sure to rattle Moscow, which sees the region as within its sphere of influence.

“It’s a long time – 35 years – they fought and now they’re friends, and they’re going to be friends for a long time,” Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House, where he was flanked by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting almost all of the territory’s 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.

Trump said the two countries had committed to stop fighting, open up diplomatic relations and respect each other’s territorial integrity.

The agreement includes exclusive U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus that the White House said would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources.

Trump said the United States signed separate deals with each country to expand cooperation on energy, trade and technology, including artificial intelligence. Details were not released.

He said restrictions had also been lifted on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States, a development that could also worry Moscow.

Both leaders praised Trump for helping to end the conflict and said they would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump has tried to present himself as a global peacemaker in the first months of his second term. The White House credits him with brokering a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand and sealing peace deals between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Pakistan and India.

However, he has not managed to end Russia’s 3-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine or Israel’s conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Trump on Friday said he would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15 to work on ending the war.

ENDING SANCTIONS EVASION BLIND SPOT

U.S. officials said the agreement was hammered out during repeated visits to the region and would provide a basis for working toward a full normalization between the countries.

The peace deal could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey and Iran that is criss-crossed by oil and gas pipelines but riven by closed borders and longstanding ethnic conflicts.

Brett Erickson, a sanctions expert and adviser to Loyola University’s Chicago School of Law, said the agreement would help the West crack down on Russian efforts to evade sanctions.

“The Caucasus has been a blind spot in sanctions policy,” he said. “A formal peace creates a platform for the West to engage Armenia and Azerbaijan … to shut down the evasion pipelines.”

Tina Dolbaia, an associate fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Friday’s signing was a big symbolic move, but many questions remained, including which U.S. companies might control the new transit corridor and how involved Armenia and Azerbaijan would be in its construction.

She said Russia would likely be irritated by being excluded from the agreement and the U.S. role in the corridor. “Now the fact that … Armenians are shaking hands with Azerbaijanis, and they are talking about US involvement in this corridor – this is huge for Russia,” she said.

Olesya Vartanyan, an independent regional expert, said the deal added greater predictability to the region, but its long-term prospects would depend on continued U.S. engagement.

“Armenia and Azerbaijan … have a much longer track record of failed negotiations and violent escalations than of peaceful resolutions,” she said. “Without proper and continued U.S. involvement, the issue will likely get deadlocked again, increasing the chances of renewed tensions.”

Senior administration officials said the agreement marked the end to the first of several frozen conflicts on Russia’s periphery since the end of the Cold War, sending a powerful signal to the entire region.

Armenia plans to award the U.S. exclusive special development rights for an extended period on the transit corridor, U.S. officials told Reuters this week. The so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity has already drawn interest from nine companies, including three U.S. firms, one official said on condition of anonymity.

Daphne Panayotatos, with the Washington-based rights group Freedom Now, said it had urged the Trump administration to use the meeting with Aliyev to demand the release of some 375 political prisoners held in the country.

Azerbaijan, an oil-producing country that hosted the United Nations climate summit last November, has rejected Western criticism of its human rights record, describing it as unacceptable interference.

August 9, 2025
Mobile data service suspended in Balochistan untill August 31

QUETTA: Pakistan has suspended cell phone data services for three weeks in the province of Balochistan in a bid to block communications among miscreants behind a surge in recent attacks, an official and the government said.

In an order seen by Reuters, the government said the services would be suspended until the end of the month because of the law and order situation in the province, home to key Chinese Belt and Road projects.

“The service has been suspended because they (militants) use it for coordination and sharing information,” Shahid Rind, a spokesperson for the provincial government, said on Friday.

Officials said there are 8.5 million cell phone subscribers in Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province by size, which borders Afghanistan and Iran. But it is thinly populated, with just 15 million from a national population of 240 million.

The news follows Pakistan’s ban on road travel to Iran late last month, citing security threats.

The region is home to the Gwadar Port, built by Beijing as part of a $65-billion investment in Pakistan in the Belt and Road programme designed to expand China’s global reach.

Islamabad accuses arch-rival India of funding and backing the insurgents in a bid to stoke instability, as Pakistan seeks international investments in the region.

Read More: 33 Khawarij killed in Zhob as infiltration bid from Afghanistan foiled: ISPR

Earlier on Friday, Pakistani security forces killed 33 terrorists affiliated with the group Fitna al-Khawarij during an attempted infiltration across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in Balochistan, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said, as reported by ARY News.

According to the ISPR, on the night of August 7-8, 2025, security forces detected the movement of a large group of Khawarij—linked to the Indian proxy group Fitna al-Khawarij, who were trying to infiltrate through Pakistan-Afghanistan border, in general area Sambaza, Zhob District of Balochistan.

“Own troops effectively engaged and thwarted their attempt to infiltrate. As a result of precise, bold and skillful engagement, thirty three Indian sponsored khwarij were killed. A large cache of weapons, ammunition & explosives was also recovered,” the military’s media wing said.

ISPR said that sanitization operation is being conducted to eliminate any other khwarij found in the area.

August 9, 2025
Norway wealth fund to announce measures on Israeli investments over Gaza concerns

OSLO: Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund will announce changes to the handling of its Israeli investments, Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday, ruling out any blanket withdrawal over the war in Gaza.

The fund itself said it would provide an update on its Israeli investments on Tuesday. The government this week launched an urgent review of the investments over ethics concerns linked to the war in Gaza and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

“I see several measures over time, but what can be addressed quickly, must be done quickly,” Stoltenberg told a press conference after holding his second meeting with fund officials in three days.

He did not say what these measures could be, but added that there would not be a wholesale divestment from all Israeli companies. “If we did that, it would mean we are divesting from them because they are Israeli,” he said.

The review followed local news reports that the fund had built a stake in an Israeli jet engine group, Bet Shemesh Engines Ltd (BSEL) BSEN.TA, which provides services to Israel’s armed forces, including the maintenance of fighter jets, creating a political debate in the Nordic country ahead of elections on September 8.

On Wednesday, the fund’s ethics watchdog, which checks that the fund’s investments respect ethical guidelines set by parliament, acknowledged it should have considered Bet Shemesh Engines for possible divestment. Bet Shemesh did not reply to requests for comment.

USE OF EXTERNAL MANAGERS UNDER SCRUTINY

Stoltenberg said that one question being discussed between the finance ministry and the fund was its use of external portfolio managers for some of its holdings. He said Bet Shemesh had been handled by an external manager, which he did not name.

The fund said it uses three Israeli external fund managers for some of its holdings in the country.

Read More: Israel approves plan to take control of Gaza

The fund, which owns stakes in 8,700 companies worldwide, held shares in 65 Israeli companies at the end of 2024, valued at $1.95 billion, its records show.

It has sold its stakes in an Israeli energy company and a telecoms group in the last year, and its ethics watchdog has said it is reviewing whether to divest holdings in five banks.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners have said this is not enough and have called for a country-wide divestment by the fund. Norway’s parliament in June rejected a proposal for the fund to divest from all companies with activities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

August 8, 2025
US gold futures hit all-time high

August 8, 2025: US gold futures hit a record high on Friday amid uncertainty over whether country-specific U.S. import tariffs would apply to the most commonly traded sizes of gold bars.

Spot prices, meanwhile, eased but remained on track for a weekly gain.

Washington may place the most widely traded gold bullion bars in the United States under country-specific import tariffs, according to a ruling on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service’s website, which would be a major blow to global supply chains for the metal.

December U.S. gold futures rose 1.2% to $3,494.10 per ounce as of 11:21 am ET (1521 GMT) after hitting a record $3,534.10 earlier in the session, when the Financial Times first reported the news.

“Gold’s panic ascent shows that even safe haven assets are not immune to the volatility unleashed in the confusion of the tariff age,” Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets, Hargreaves Lansdown.

“If there is follow through and no intervention, this could threaten New York’s dominance in the gold futures market, given prices have risen sharply compared to other trading centres,” she added.

Gold Rates Today in Pakistan

August 8, 2025
India pauses plans to buy US arms after Trump’s tariffs

NEW DELHI: India has put on hold its plans to procure new U.S. weapons and aircraft, according to three Indian officials familiar with the matter, in India’s first concrete sign of discontent after tariffs imposed on its exports by President Donald Trump dragged ties to their lowest level in decades.

India had been planning to send Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to Washington in the coming weeks for an announcement on some of the purchases, but that trip has been cancelled, two of the people said.

Trump on Aug. 6 imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods as punishment for Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, which he said meant the country was funding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That raised the total duty on Indian exports to 50% – among the highest of any U.S. trading partner.

The president has a history of rapidly reversing himself on tariffs and India has said it remains actively engaged in discussions with Washington. One of the people said the defence purchases could go ahead once India had clarity on tariffs and the direction of bilateral ties, but “just not as soon as they were expected to.”

Written instructions had not been given to pause the purchases, another official said, indicating that Delhi had the option to quickly reverse course, though there was “no forward movement at least for now.”

Post publication of this story, India’s government issued a statement it attributed to a Ministry of Defence source describing news reports of a pause in the talks as “false and fabricated.” The statement also said procurement was progressing as per “extant procedures.”

Delhi, which has forged a close partnership with America in recent years, has said it is being unfairly targeted and that Washington and its European allies continue to trade with Moscow when it is in their interest.

Reuters is reporting for the first time that discussions on India’s purchases of Stryker combat vehicles made by General Dynamics Land Systems and Javelin anti-tank missiles developed by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have been paused due to the tariffs.

Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in February announced plans to pursue procurement and joint production of those items.

Singh had also been planning to announce the purchase of six Boeing P8I reconnaissance aircraft and support systems for the Indian Navy during his now-cancelled trip, two of the people said. Talks over procuring the aircraft in a proposed $3.6 billion deal were at an advanced stage, according to the officials.

August 8, 2025