BEIRUT: US forces killed two Daesh “officials” in an overnight raid in eastern Syria, US Central Command said on Sunday.
The forces “conducted a successful helicopter raid in eastern Syria at 2:57 am (2357 GMT)… killing two Daesh officials,” CENTCOM said in a statement without providing a more specific location.
It identified one of those killed as “Anas,” a Daesh “Syria province official” who was involved in “plotting and facilitation operations in eastern Syria,” according to the statement.

JEDDAH: Iran’s currency fell to a record low against the dollar on Sunday, with nationwide anti-government protests now in their third month.

A breakdown in negotiations to restore Tehran’s nuclear deal has also hurt the value of the rial.

Traders in Tehran were exchanging the rial at around 370,000 to the dollar on Sunday, up from 368,000 on Thursday.

Iran’s currency was trading at 32,000 rials to the dollar at the time of the 2015 nuclear accord that dropped international sanctions in exchange for tight controls on Iran’s nuclear program.

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for a 30-km security corridor on Turkiye’s border with Syria in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Erdogan’s office said on Sunday.

Referring to Kurdish militants that Ankara considers terrorists, Erdogan reiterated the “importance and urgency” of creating the corridor in northern Syria in accordance with a 2019 agreement between Turkiye and Russia, the statement added.

CAIRO: Visitors from Russia remained an important part of Egypt’s tourism trade, Cairo’s envoy to Moscow has said.

And addressing representatives of major Russian tourism companies at a forum organized by the Egyptian Embassy in Russia, ambassador Nazih Al-Najari highlighted efforts to further increase traveller numbers.

Amr El-Kady, chief executive officer of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Board, joined the event via video call. Moscow-based representatives of national flag carrier EgyptAir were also among the audience.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A Tokyo company aimed for the moon with its own private lander Sunday, blasting off atop a SpaceX rocket with the United Arab Emirates’ first lunar rover and a toylike robot from Japan that’s designed to roll around up there in the gray dust.
It will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moon.