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A new country is poised to join the Abraham Accords, the series of normalisation agreements with Israel, according to U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
Speaking at a business forum in Miami on Thursday, Witkoff said he was returning to Washington for the official announcement later in the evening.
“I’m flying back to Washington tonight because we’re going to announce another country joining the Abraham Accords,” he said.
Trump is expected to host the leaders of five Central Asian nations — Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan — at the White House on Thursday evening. It remains unclear whether the announcement will take place during the dinner, though the president is expected to attend.
The Abraham Accords, first signed during Trump’s initial term in office, normalised relations between Israel and several Muslim-majority countries. To date, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates have joined the agreements.
According to Axios, the country expected to join is Kazakhstan, which has maintained diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992. A U.S. official told the outlet that the move aims to reinvigorate efforts to expand regional normalisation.
“This demonstrates that the Abraham Accords remain a group many countries wish to be part of. It’s also a step towards turning the page on the Gaza war and fostering greater peace and cooperation in the region,” the official said.
The announcement comes as Israel faces increasing diplomatic isolation amid its ongoing war in Gaza, where nearly 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to figures from Gaza's Health Ministry.
In response, several nations have severed diplomatic ties with Israel or officially recognised the State of Palestine, underscoring the growing international backlash over the conflict.
Bulgaria has won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, taking victory in a final overshadowed by a boycott over Israel’s participation and the war in Gaza.
At least eight people were injured after a driver rammed a car into pedestrians in the northern Italian city of Modena, authorities said on Saturday. Four of the victims were reported to be in serious condition.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington could destroy Iran’s infrastructure “in two days,” while Tehran warned the U.S. would face growing economic costs from the conflict. The remarks came as Hezbollah reported new attacks on Israeli forces despite an extended Lebanon ceasefire.
At least eight people have died and 32 others were injured after a freight train collided with a public bus at a railway crossing in Bangkok on Saturday (16 May), triggering a fire that quickly spread through the vehicle.
Jeffrey D. Sachs, an economist, public policy analyst, Columbia University professor, and UN advisor, said Azerbaijan and the wider South Caucasus could become one of the world’s key strategic connectors in an emerging multipolar order.
At least four people have been killed in a major Ukrainian drone attack on Russian territory, including the Moscow region, which authorities say faced its largest aerial assault in more than a year.
China has launched the world’s first experiment to study how artificial human embryos develop in space, marking a major step in understanding whether humans could one day reproduce beyond Earth.
Every day, an elderly woman in China’s Shandong province looks forward to a video call from her son. He asks about her health, tells her he has been busy with work, and promises he will come home once he has saved enough money. She tells him she misses him. He tells her to take care of herself.
Bulgaria has won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, taking victory in a final overshadowed by a boycott over Israel’s participation and the war in Gaza.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), warning that the situation poses a significant risk of cross-border spread in Central Africa.
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