JEDDAH: Iran and the US resumed indirect talks on Tuesday aimed at rescuing Tehran’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

Tehran’s top nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani met EU official Enrique Mora in Doha, and Mora began passing messages to Rob Malley, the US special representative for Iran.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said the talks aimed to reestablish the deal “in a way that supports and enhances security, stability and peace in the region and opens new horizons for broader regional cooperation and dialogue” with Iran.

BEIRUT: Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati, who has been tasked with forming a new Lebanese government at the end of his non-binding parliamentary consultations on Tuesday, said that he “went over the opinions of the MPs and we will take most of what they said into consideration, but what matters is that national interest prevails.”

Mikati said that the opinions shared by the MPs “are in the national interest, even if from different angles.” 

ALGIERS: An Algerian appeals court on Tuesday upheld a 20-year prison sentence for corruption against Chakib Khelil, energy minister for a decade under longtime president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the APS news agency reported.
The court also fined him two million dinars (about $13,600) and upheld prison sentences of five and six years respectively against Mohamed Meziane, ex-head of state oil and gas giant Sonatrach, and his deputy Abdelhafidh Feghouli.

GENEVA: More than 100 people, including many women, have been murdered in a Syrian camp in just 18 months, the UN said Tuesday, demanding countries repatriate their citizens.
The Al-Hol camp is increasingly unsafe and the child detainees are being condemned to a life with no future, said Imran Riza, the UN resident coordinator in Syria.
Al-Hol, in the Kurdish-controlled northeast, was meant as a temporary detention facility.

JEDDAH: Last week, Nayera Ashraf, a student at Mansoura University in Egypt, was beaten and stabbed in broad daylight as bystanders looked on in horror. She died later that day. The attacker was restrained and arrested. His motive for such a dreadful crime? The refusal of a marriage proposal.