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TEHRAN, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismissed on Saturday the U.S. fresh sanctions on Iran as the failed experience, official IRNA news agency reported.

The U.S. has sought "to cripple and hold back Iran's economy" by resorting to sanctions, "but the outcome is that the country moves broadly towards self-sufficiency," Khamenei was quoted as saying.

"In the past, Iranians had become accustomed to importing everything, but now, they are used to producing those things," he said.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan; 4 Nov 2018; AA:China and Pakistan on Saturday signed 15 agreements and memorandum of understandings (MoUs) for cooperation in diverse fields, including poverty alleviation, agriculture and transfer of electronics, local media reported.

The agreements were signed in a delegation level talks between the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the people in Beijing, according state-run Radio Pakistan. 

Khan is currently on a four-day official visit to China.

4 Nov 2018; DW: Iran has started manufacturing its own locally designed fighter jet for use in its air force, state TV reported. It comes as Donald Trump's administration prepares to impose another set sanctions on Tehran.

Iran launched production of the domestically designed Kowsar fighter plane on Saturday, state television reported, after the United States announced the reimposition of sanctions on Tehran.

BEIJING (AP) — Close ally China said Saturday it was willing to offer assistance to Pakistan to help it weather its current fiscal woes but that terms of such aid are still being discussed.

That followed a meeting in Beijing between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Pakistan’s newly elected Prime Minister Imran Khan, who met the previous day with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Pakistan’s growing fiscal crisis has raised questions about its ability to repay Chinese loans granted as part of Beiing’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative.

LONDON (AP) — Brexit is undermining Northern Ireland’s hard-won peace by creating tensions between Catholic and Protestant communities, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Saturday, even as hopes rose for a solution to the Irish border problem that has deadlocked negotiations.

“Brexit has undermined the Good Friday Agreement” — the 1998 peace deal that ended three decades of violence in Northern Ireland — “and it is fraying relationships between Britain and Ireland,” Varadkar said.

Sydney, Nov 1 (AFP) China's rising and "unprecedented influence" in the Indo-Pacific region will challenge American interests, but confrontation must not define relations between the two powers, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned Thursday.

In his first major foreign policy speech, Morrison tried to tread a careful line between Australia's alliance with the United States and engaging a rapidly and evermore assertive China.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hundreds of Google engineers and other workers are expected to walk off the job Thursday morning to protest the internet company’s lenient treatment of executives accused of sexual misconduct.

It is the latest expression of a backlash against men’s exploitation of female subordinates in a business, entertainment and politics. In Silicon Valley, women also are becoming fed up with the male-dominated composition of the technology industry’s workforce — a glaring imbalance that critics say fosters unsavory behavior akin to a college fraternity house.

BANGKOK (AP) — The Pacific rim trade pact abandoned by President Donald Trump will take effect at the year’s end after Australia became the sixth nation to ratify it.

Australia announced Wednesday that it had completed procedures needed for the trade arrangement, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, to progress. It will take effect Dec. 30.

The deal is aimed at streamlining trade and slashing tariffs to facilitate more business activities between member nations with a combined population of nearly 500 million people and GDP of $13.5 trillion.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — It was a scene unthinkable just weeks ago: an Israeli Cabinet minister, tears of joy filling her eyes, proudly singing her country’s national anthem at a sports event in the heart of the Arab world.

The spectacle of Miri Regev singing “HaTikva,” which describes the Jewish yearning for a homeland in Zion, was just one in a series of taboo-busting public appearances by Israeli officials in Gulf Arab states that have thrust the once-secret back channels of outreach into public view.

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s top court on Wednesday ordered the government to provide pricing details of 36 Rafale fighter jets it is buying from France.

The court said the government must bring details of the decision-making process of the deal into the public domain, except those that are confidential and have strategic importance. The court said those can be provided in a “sealed cover” within 10 days.