Shabtabnews — Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton’s (D-VA) Uyghur Forced Labor Disclosure Act passed the House of Representatives today on a bipartisan vote. Wexton’s legislation would require U.S. publicly listed companies to review and actively audit supply chains for forced labor. Recent reports implicate a number of U.S. companies in the Chinese government’s forced labor scheme carried out against ethnic Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur …

Al-Arabia – The Iranian rial fell to a new low against the dollar on Thursday as the country’s economy continues to suffer from the coronavirus pandemic and US sanctions, data showed. The US dollar was selling for as much as 300,000 rials on the unofficial market Thursday, data from foreign exchange website Bonbast.com showed, 2,000 rials up from Wednesday. Dollars …

gatestoneinstitute.org – The US and its allies need to do everything possible never again to be caught in a state of unpreparedness. The Congressional EMP Commission estimates that, given U.S. current unpreparedness, within one year of an EMP attack that causes a nationwide blackout… up to 90 percent of the U.S. population could perish from starvation, disease and societal collapse. …

(AP) — The second of three ships loaded with gasoline from Iran approached fuel-starved Venezuela on Wednesday amid simmering social unrest over a lack of goods and services that’s sparked protests across the South American nation. More than 100 street demonstrations have flared up in remote towns over the last week. Despite each being relatively small, they have raised concern …

Radiofarda – Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières) has condemned the transfer of political prisoner Soheil Arabi to solitary confinement in the infamous Raja’ei Shahr prison. Iranian agents placed the 35-year-old blogger in solitary confinement after he exposed the “deplorable condition” of the Greater Tehran Penitentiary (GTP) in an audio file leaked out of the notorious jail. With an official …

RFL/RE – A suspected Iran-backed militia launched at least six rockets near U.S. troops stationed at Irbil airport in the semiautonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq.Iraqi Kurdistan’s counterterrorism service blamed the September 30 attack on the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), an Iraqi state paramilitary organization dominated by Iran-backed groups.“Six rockets were launched from the borders of the Sheikh Amir village in …

RFL/RE – Iran has spent nearly $20 billion pushing its controversial foreign policy objectives in the region, the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said in an interview on state television.Speaking to state TV channel Ofogh on September 26, Ali Fadavi said Iran had spent $19.6 billion on the 1980-1988 war with Iraq while adding that the …

RFL/RE – The UN’s nuclear watchdog says it has gained access to a second site in Iran where nuclear activities are suspected to have taken place in the past, as agreed with Tehran last month.“As part of an agreement with Iran to resolve safeguards implementation issues specified by the IAEA, the agency this week conducted a complementary access at the …

VOA – Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation, acknowledges that Iran has ‘legitimate interests” in his country as a neighbor that hosts millions of Afghan refugees. Iran’s contacts with various Taliban groups, he says, could be used as an opportunity to advance peace efforts. Ayesha Tanzeem has more.

Iran-HRM – Some 82 political prisoners detained in Ward 5 of the Greater Tehran Penitentiary were transferred on Wednesday to Ward 2 of the prison, where had previously housed drug offenders. On Wednesday morning, the head of Ward 5 informed the prisoners who are mostly detained on politically motivated charges and participating in November 2019 protests, that all of them …