Iran leader's remarks
The leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution has asked the government of President Ebrahim Raeisi to take necessary actions to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions on people’s livelihoods. Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei issued the call while meeting with cabinet ministers. He underlined that the sanctions on Iran are aimed at taking people’s livelihoods hostage. The leader stressed that the most important way of neutralizing sanctions is to reduce inflation. He further said that anti-sanction measures should go hand-in-hand with negotiations on the country’s nuclear issues. Ayatollah Khamenei called on the authorities to take decisions that could show growth in macroeconomic indicators, while weighing their impacts on the market and inflation.
Gabon political crisis
A group of senior military officers in Gabon says they have seized power because elections held in the country over the weekend were not credible. The move came shortly after the electoral body said President Ali Bongo Ondimba had won a third term in office. The government of the Central African nation has not commented on the coup yet. Gabonese people voted in presidential and parliamentary polls on Saturday. The transparency of the elections has been questioned due to a lack of international observation, suspension of foreign broadcasts, and internet cuts. The opposition camp says the election was a "fraud" orchestrated by Ali Bongo and his supporters. The European Union has expressed concern over the developments in the Central African nation.
'No tech for apartheid'
Anti-Israel activists are demanding the American multinational technology firm, Google, cancel its cloud contract with the Israeli regime. The protesters, mostly members of the No Tech for Apartheid Campaign, gathered outside the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco to make their voices heard. They denounced the company’s Project Nimbus which provides cloud services to the Israeli regime and its military. The protesters warned that the cloud technology developed by Google is being used against Palestinians, including for surveillance and racial segregation. Amazon Web Services is also part of the multi-year project signed in 2021. Google has not responded to a request for comment yet. But activists say they have more reasons than ever to push tech companies like Google that they cannot continue profiting by empowering Israeli apartheid.