Pakistani health authorities on Friday (November 8) announced the identification of two new cases of polio in Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. With the identification of these two new cases, the total number of polio cases in Pakistan this year has reached 48.
The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health of Pakistan on Friday announced that it has identified two new cases of the polio virus.
The first case of polio was reported in Sindh's Ghotki district, with Sukar, Rahim Yar Khan and Shikarpur districts being areas where cases of the virus had previously been recorded, the organisation said.
The second case was also detected on Friday in the Dera Ismail Khan area of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the report added. Earlier, three more cases of polio have been recorded in this district this year, the organisation said.
The agency said that genetic sequencing of samples collected from both children is currently under review. Pakistani health officials also stressed on the importance of the polio vaccine to protect children from virus-related disabilities.
Pakistani health officials urged parents across the country to ensure that all children under the age of five have received a dose of oral polio vaccine.
Pakistan's health authorities have reported 48 cases of polio in the country this year, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently the only countries where the virus has so far claimed victims.
Nasir Ahmad Faiq, Afghanistan's acting representative to the United Nations, said that the condition of Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan is "dire”.
Speaking at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee on Thursday, Faiq said that many Afghan refugee children in neighbouring countries have been deprived of education and health services.
Faiq said that the Afghan refugee population has reached an alarming figure and that more than five million Afghan refugees have taken refuge in Iran and Pakistan. He added that the high volume of immigrants has put the countries under a lot of pressure.
"Since the Taliban's military takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, more than 1.6 million more Afghans have fled violence, economic collapse and systematic human rights violations and sought refuge in neighbouring countries," Faiq said.
He called on UN member states to increase their financial commitments to support Afghan refugees. Member states should increase resettlement quotas and support Afghan refugees through safe routes, such as family reunification and humanitarian visas, he said. According to him, this will reduce the pressure on the host countries.
Pakistan and Iran have intensified the deportation of Afghan refugees. Iran is currently aggressively implementing the deportation of migrants, and thousands of Afghan migrants are being arrested and deported every day. In recent months, there have been numerous reports of Iranian police officials mistreating migrants and attacking Afghans in parts of Iran.
Among the undocumented immigrants, the Islamic Republic also deports Afghans with legal documents. Faiq described the conditions of Afghan refugees in these countries as dire, adding that refugees in Iran face challenges in accessing banking and other services due to problems related to documents, and some of them are even deported from the country despite having documents.
The Acting Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations also emphasised that there should be no forced deportation of Afghans, adding that the voluntary return of Afghan refugees should be carried out in safe conditions and with respect for their human dignity.
Referring to a recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Faiq said that the population of Afghan refugees and migrants has reached 5.53 million and since September last year, more than 733,000 Afghans, including women and children, have returned to the country from Pakistan.
Ehsan Heidari, a high-ranking official of the Immigrant and Foreign Nationals Affairs of Tehran Governorate, said that since the beginning of the project to organise child labour, 930 child laborers and their 650 families have been deported.
Heidari announced the establishment of a centre for the collection and deportation of migrant child labourers in Tehran.
On Saturday, November 9, Heidari said, "The plan to organise working and street children has been implemented by the Tehran Municipality and the Welfare Department of this province since the past nine months."
According to the plan, migrant child labourers will be identified and collected and then returned to their country of origin from the borders of Iran along with their families, he added.
He noted that this plan will continue "in earnest" until the end of deportation of migrant child labourers from Tehran Province. He also emphasised on the intensification of the process of deportation of immigrants without residency documents in Iran.
The Islamic Republic has announced that it will deport at least two million undocumented immigrants by the end of this year. Currently, many Iranian cities have criminalised the employment of undocumented Afghan migrants and prohibited renting houses to these migrants.
The US Department of Justice announced that Farhad Shakeri, who was assigned by Iran to assassinate Donald Trump, is an Afghan.
According to a criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) official ordered Shakeri last September to prepare a plan to kill Trump, the department said in a statement.
The US Department of Justice on Friday announced criminal charges related to the foiling of the Iranian government's plot to assassinate Donald Trump before the recent election.
In a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, the department said in a statement on Friday, November 8, that an unnamed IRGC official had instructed a liaison, Farhad Shakeri, last September to prepare a plan to monitor and ultimately kill Trump.
According to the US Department of Justice, the IRGC official told Farhad Shakeri that if he could not assassinate Trump before the election, it would be postponed until after the presidential election, because he claimed that Trump would lose the election and it would be easier to assassinate him.
US prosecutors said that Shakeri was initially tasked by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with carrying out other assassinations against US and Israeli citizens inside the United States, but IRGC officials told Shakeri to focus only on Trump.
According to the US Department of Justice, Farhad Shakeri is an IRGC operative based in Tehran. He immigrated to the United States as a child and was deported from the United States around 2008 after spending 14 years in New York prisons for robbery.
The Justice Department statement said that Shakeri told the FBI in a recorded interview that he did not intend to present a plan to kill Trump within the seven-day deadline given to him by the Revolutionary Guard official.
Shakeri informed law enforcement agents that he had been tasked with hatching a plot to assassinate Donald J. Trump, the president-elect. He also announced that he was obliged to spy on two Jewish American citizens living in New York, and that a Revolutionary Guard official had offered $500,000 for the murder of each of them. He was also tasked with targeting Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka.
The US Department of Justice on Friday charged three people with assassinating US citizens, including conspiracy to assassinate Trump.
Farhad Shakeri, 51, of Iran; Carlisle Rivera, known as "Pop," of Brooklyn, NY, and Jonathan Loadholt, 36, of Staten Island, NY, were charged with involvement in the plot to assassinate a US citizen, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.
"Loadholt and Rivera, for months, monitored an Iranian-American citizen living in the United States on Shakeri's orders," the statement said, referring only to the "victim-1" and saying that the person was an outspoken critic of the Iranian government and that the Islamic Republic had previously attempted to kidnap or kill them. It seems that this critic is Masih Alinejad.
Masih Alinejad, a human rights activist and journalist critical of the Islamic Republic, wrote on social media platform X that she has learned that the FBI has arrested two people who were planning to assassinate her in the United States.
During their efforts to find and kill the "victim-1", the statement said that Shakeri, Loadholt and Rivera exchanged messages and photos about the progress of their work.
Earlier, the US government confirmed that the Islamic Republic is seeking to kill Donald Trump and a number of his first administration officials, including Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook, and John Bolton, in retaliation for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, the former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said, "Few countries in the world pose a more serious threat to US national security than Iran. The Department of Justice has charged an Iranian regime operative with directing a network of criminal accomplices to advance Iran's assassination plots against its targets, including President-elect Donald Trump."
Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that India's envoy had travelled to Kabul to discuss the use of Chabahar port to strengthen economic ties and humanitarian aid.
Jaiswal said that the Indian delegation met with Taliban officials and former president Hamid Karzai in Kabul.
Jaiswal also gave details of the Indian delegation's visit to Afghanistan during a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday.
JP Singh, the head of the Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran section of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, travelled to Kabul with a delegation over the past few days and met with Taliban officials.
The Taliban's Ministry of Defence wrote in a statement on Wednesday that Yaqoob Mujahid, the Taliban's defence minister, spoke with JP Singh and discussed the shared desire to expand bilateral relations.
Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban's foreign minister, also said in a meeting with JP Singh that the group expects its relations with New Delhi to develop.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a meeting with the Indian delegation, also called for the country's attention to education for Afghans and the development of trade exchanges between India and Afghanistan.
The spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs confirmed that during the meetings of the Indian delegation in Kabul, the humanitarian aid to Afghanistan and how the Chabahar port can be used by the business community in Afghanistan for exchanges, exports and imports, and any other work they wish to do, were discussed.
Declaring that the provision of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan is an important part of India's aid programmes, Jaiswal said, "We have sent several shipments of wheat to Afghanistan so far.
Swiss radio and television reported that the country has resumed the process of deporting some Afghan and Ukrainian foreign criminals after a hiatus of several years.
The Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) announced that the decision includes people who pose a threat to the country's public safety.
In the first phase of this action, Switzerland deported three Ukrainian citizens last week and two Afghan citizens last month. The report also notes that the two Afghan nationals are the first cases of deportations of Afghan refugees since the Taliban came to power in August 2021.
One of them is an asylum seeker who was sentenced to a 16-month suspended prison sentence and a seven-year ban on entering Switzerland in 2018 for kicking another Afghan citizen in the head during a soccer match.
Vincenzo Mascioli, director of the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), defended the decision, saying it was the first deportation to Ukraine since the start of the war in the country.
Some human rights organisations and migration experts have criticised Switzerland's decision. Amnesty International Switzerland has considered this action a violation of the humanitarian principle of non-return of refugees, stressing that Afghanistan and Ukraine are not suitable places for these people to return due to the dangerous security situation.
However, the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) has stated that the dangerous security situation in these countries is generally not an obstacle to deporting people to these countries. According to this decision, the insecurity of the destination country alone is not enough to waive the deportation, and the decision on each case is made separately and after further investigation.