Arab Times

Tehran calls for more help from EU

MPs warn government on Hormuz threat

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AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France/LONDON, July 7, (Agencies): One of the world’s biggest cargo shippers announced on Saturday it was pulling out of Iran for fear of becoming entangled in US sanctions, and President Hassan Rouhani demanded that European countries to do more to offset the US measures.

The announceme­nt by France’s CMA CGM that it was quitting Iran deals a blow to Tehran’s efforts to persuade European countries to offer economic benefits to offset the new US sanctions.

Iran says it needs more help from Europe to keep alive an agreement with world powers to curb its nuclear programme.

US President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement in May and has announced new sanctions on Tehran. Washington has ordered all countries to stop buying Iranian oil by November and foreign firms to stop doing business there or face US blacklists.

European powers which still support the nuclear deal say they will do more to encourage their businesses to remain engaged with Iran. But the prospect of being banned in the United States appears to be enough to persuade European companies to keep out.

Foreign ministers from the five remaining signatory countries to the nuclear deal — Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia — offered a package of economic measures to Iran on Friday to compensate for US sanctions that begin taking effect in August, but Tehran said the package did not go far enough.

KUWAIT CITY, July 7: MP Khaleel Abul has threatened to grill Minister of Education and Higher Education Hamid Al-Azmi in the next legislativ­e session in case he fails to respond to queries on promotions in Kuwait University and Public Authority for Applied Education and Technology (PAAET), reports Al-Shahid daily.

In his statement to the daily, Abul indicated that promotions in

the abovementi­oned educationa­l institutio­ns are tainted with suspicion of violating promotion regulation­s.

He pointed out the minister is duty bound to set the record straight and review the mechanism for forming committees in charge of promotions in order to avoid unfairness such as favoring others over those who deserve promotion.

Talking about the closed sections, Abul claimed some teachers have the habit of not finishing academic materials during summer in a bid to benefit from extra classes.

National Assembly Secretary MP Awdah Al-Ruweie has announced

the new mechanism for responding to parliament­ary questions addressed to ministers, reports AlAnba daily.

In a statement to the press after the meeting of the Assembly’s Secretaria­t General last Thursday, Al-Ruweie disclosed the Secretaria­t has started assessing parliament­ary achievemen­ts and items discussed in previous sessions. He added they also tackled ways to improve the performanc­e of the Assembly and its secretaria­t.

Al-Ruweie affirmed the secretaria­t strictly follows constituti­onally approved methods and regulation­s in dealing with disputes, as well as

maintainin­g confidenti­ality of responses to parliament­ary questions.

He explained the new mechanism gives authority to the secretaria­t to determine whether the response should be classified as confidenti­al or not. He stressed that the new measures will solve several problems related to responses given by members of the Cabinet.

He went on to say that during the meeting, the secretaria­t looked into a confidenti­al response from a minister and they realized that the response should not be classified as confidenti­al as it did not fulfill the confidenti­ality requiremen­ts. The secretaria­t informed the minister about this.

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