WASHINGTON: The CIA said on Thursday it will create a top-level working group on China as part of a broad US government effort focused on countering Beijing’s influence. The group will become one of fewer than a dozen mission centres operated by the CIA, with weekly director-level meetings intended to drive the agency’s strategy towards […]
The United States and China have agreed in principle for their presidents to hold a virtual meeting before the end of the year, a senior US administration official said on Wednesday, after high-level talks aimed at improving communication between the two countries. The closed-door meeting at an airport hotel in the Swiss city of Zurich […]
KABUL: Afghanistan will start issuing passports to its citizens again, a senior official said on Tuesday, following months of delays that hampered attempts by those trying to flee the country after the Taliban seized control in August. The process, which had slowed even before the Taliban’s return to power following the withdrawal of US forces, […]
Facebook blamed a “faulty configuration change” for a nearly six-hour outage on Monday that prevented the company’s 3.5 billion users from accessing its social media and messaging services such as WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. The company, in a blog post published late on Monday, did not specify who executed the configuration change and whether it was planned but said […]
The Taliban said on Monday they had destroyed a cell of the militant Islamic State (IS) group in the Afghan capital, hours after a suspected IS attack on a mosque killed five people. The Taliban overran Kabul seven weeks ago and have set up an interim Afghan government, but still face attacks from the regional branch of […]
Former US President Donald Trump asked a federal judge in Florida on Friday to ask Twitter to restore his account, which the company removed in January citing a risk of incitement of violence. Trump filed a request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing the social media […]
KUTUPALONG: The brother of slain Rohingya community leader Mohib Ullah on Thursday blamed militants for murdering him in a Bangladesh refugee camp because of his popularity and rights work. Mohib Ullah had emerged in recent years as one of the most prominent representatives of around 850,000 Rohingya stuck in camps in Bangladesh since fleeing violence in Myanmar […]
The Taliban on Thursday violently cracked down on a small women’s rights demonstration, firing shots into the air and pushing back protesters, AFP journalists witnessed. A group of six women gathered outside a high school in eastern Kabul, demanding the right for girls to return to secondary school after the group excluded them from classes earlier this month. The women […]
The Taliban on Wednesday warned of consequences if the US did not stop flying drones over Afghan airspace. “The US has violated all international rights and laws as well as its commitments made to the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, with the operation of these drones in Afghanistan,” the Taliban said in a statement on Twitter. […]
The Taliban have banned barbershops in a southern Afghanistan province from shaving or trimming beards, claiming their edict is in line with Islamic, law. The order in Helmand province was issued on Monday by the provincial Taliban government’s vice and virtue department to barbers in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. “Since I have heard (about the ban on trimming […]