Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization (TPO) has plans to increase exports of engineering and technical services to neighboring countries, as well as China and India, said the head of TPO on Friday.

Lebanon’s authorities signed a contract this month with a German company to clear dangerous material stored for more than a decade at Beirut port, the site of a seismic blast in August that killed about 200 people and wrecked swathes of the capital.

Iran’s permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna said the United States, which owns thousands of nuclear warheads and is the sole country to have used nuclear weapons, is in no position to talk about non-proliferation concerns.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman urged France, Germany, Britain instead of playing a blame game against Tehran, to fully implement their commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The Arab League and Syria categorically condemned US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to the occupied territories of Palestine in West Bank and the occupied portion of Syria’s Golan Heights, describing it as a clear violation of international law.

National Desk

At least 37 people have died and hundreds have been detained in unrest in Uganda triggered by the arrest of presidential candidate and pop star Bobi Wine, police said on Friday, as the East African country gears up for elections in January.

Units of the Azerbaijani Army have entered the Aghdam region, a territory ceded by Armenian forces in a cease-fire agreement that ended six weeks of heavy fighting over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said Friday.

The European Commission plans to step into the patent dispute between tech companies and carmakers and may set up a system to check whether some patents are essential to a technology standard as claimed, according to a commission document.

The National Science Foundation (NFS) announced Thursday that it will close the huge telescope at the renowned Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in a blow to scientists worldwide who depend on it to search for planets, asteroids and extraterrestrial life.