The Taliban have launched a crackdown on hideouts of militant Islamic State group in southern Afghanistan, officials said on Monday, following an increase in bloody attacks by the group in recent weeks. The operation against Islamic State-Khorasan — the local chapter of the group — started around midnight in at least four districts of Kandahar province and […]
US President Joe Biden will hold a virtual meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Monday, the White House said, talks Washington hopes will create some stability amid increased tensions between the world’s two largest economies. It is expected to be the leaders’ most extensive meeting under the Biden administration and will follow on from […]
LONDON: The World Health Organisation reported on Wednesday that coronavirus deaths rose by 10pc in Europe in the past week, making it the only world region where both Covid-19 cases and deaths are steadily increasing. It was the sixth consecutive week that the virus has risen across the continent. In its weekly report on the […]
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s former chief justice was sentenced in absentia to 11 years in jail for corruption on Tuesday, in a case that opposition groups and supporters say is politically motivated. Surendra Kumar Sinha, 70, headed the Supreme Court when it ruled in 2017 that parliament could not sack judges, a move hailed by lawyers as […]
Iran said on Monday that the United States should provide guarantees that it will not abandon Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers again if talks to revive the agreement succeed. Indirect talks between Iran and the United States, which stalled in June after the election of hardline Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, are set to resume on […]
Ninety-one people were killed in the capital of Sierra Leone on Friday when a fuel tanker exploded following a collision, the central morgue and local authorities said. The government has not yet confirmed the death toll, but the manager of the central state morgue in Freetown said it had received 91 bodies following the explosion. […]
GLASGOW: In the fight to curb climate change, several major coal-using nations announced steps on Thursday to wean themselves at times slowly off the heavily polluting fossil fuel. The pledges to phase out coal came on top of other promises made at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that the head of an international […]
KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban government said it would announce good news soon on older girls being allowed to go back to school, but urged the international community to help it fund the process as most external aid has been halted. Ensuring rights for women and girls has been one of the most sensitive issues facing the […]
WASHINGTON: The global death toll from Covid-19 topped five million on Monday, less than two years into a crisis that has not only devastated poor countries but also humbled wealthy ones with first-rate health care systems. Together, the United States, the European Union, Britain and Brazil all upper-middle- or high-income countries account for one-eighth of […]
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Sunday that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani promised to fight till death but fled Kabul when the Taliban came. Also, this weekend a conservative US think-tank, Hudson Institute, rated the reported US-Pakistan talks on a formal agreement for using Pakistani airspace for operations in Afghanistan as a major development. In […]