00:00Good day. Welcome to the Gulf News Update for Tuesday, January 21. Here are the top
00:09stories at this hour.
00:11The UAE State Security Court has sentenced 30 people accused of belonging to a cell of
00:16the Egyptian Emirati Muslim Brotherhood from three months to five years in jail. The verdict
00:22also applies to six Egyptians who have fled the country and were tried in absentia. The
00:28judge ordered the disbanding of the organization, shutting down of all its offices across the
00:32UAE and seizure of all its assets. Fourteen Egyptians among those convicted will be deported
00:37after they carry out their sentences.
00:40In an abrupt reversal, the United Nations has barred Iran from tomorrow's Syria peace
00:44conference after it refused to back calls for a transitional government. The unprecedented
00:49diplomatic action averted a Syrian opposition boycott of the talks, which are scheduled
00:54to start in Montreux. However, the Syrian National Council said it was quitting the
00:59coalition.
01:00Meanwhile, a cache of evidence smuggled out of Syria shows the systematic killing of about
01:0411,000 detainees by the Al-Assad regime, according to three top lawyers. The three examined thousands
01:11of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime
01:15security forces from March 2011 to August 2013.
01:20Iran suspended its most sensitive nuclear development work Monday. World powers immediately
01:25responded by lifting some of the sanctions that have crippled the oil-based economy.
01:30The lifting of the sanctions marks a first cautious step toward making good on a deal
01:34aimed at resolving a decade-long standoff over the country's nuclear program.
01:39India's Supreme Court has commuted the sentences of 15 death row convicts, ruling that delays
01:44in their execution were grounds to change their sentences to life imprisonment. A total
01:49of 15 people had challenged their death sentences due to the time taken for the Indian president
01:54to answer their mercy petitions. They include Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar from Punjab, who
01:59was convicted over a New Delhi car bombing that killed nine people in 1993. The judgment
02:05will affect the more than 400 convicts languishing on death row in India and will place more
02:10stringent conditions on the use of the death penalty.
02:13And finally, the weather. Today's high across the UAE will be 21 degrees Celsius, dropping
02:17to 15 degrees at night.
02:19That's all for now. Thanks for watching. As always, you can get the latest news on
02:22Gulfnews.com.
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