Category: World

A local radio station in eastern Afghanistan was shut down after repeated threats from the area’s Taliban commander, said its director on Tuesday. Ramez Azimi, director of the Samaa station in the city of Ghazni, the capital of eastern Ghazni province, said he received phone calls as well as written warning notes purportedly from the Taliban commander. […]

Torrential monsoon rains swept away homes and triggered landslides across South Asia, affecting millions of people and claiming at least 180 lives, officials said on Tuesday. The monsoon is crucial for irrigation and groundwater supplies in the impoverished region — home to a fifth of the world’s population — and brings relief after the unforgiving […]

Facebook’s ambitious plan to create a financial eco-system based on a digital currency faces questions from lawmakers, as it’s shadowed by negative comments from United States President Donald Trump, his treasury secretary and the head of the Federal Reserve. Congress begins two days of hearings on Tuesday on the currency planned by Facebook, to be […]

Environmental activists sought to sow chaos in five British cities on Monday in a bid to force the government to act to help avert what they cast as a climate cataclysm. The Extinction Rebellion group disrupted London with 11 days of protests in April that it cast as the biggest act of civil disobedience in […]

DUBAI: Iran is ready to hold talks with the United States if Washington lifts sanctions and returns to the 2015 nuclear deal it quit last year, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised speech on Sunday. US President Donald Trump’s administration says it is open to negotiations with Iran on a more far-reaching agreement […]

LONDON: Britain’s ambassador to Washington believed US President Donald Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal because it was associated with his predecessor Barack Obama, according to leaked documents published on Saturday. “The administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons — it was Obama’s deal,” ambassador Kim Darroch […]

SEMAISIMA (Qatar): Qatar inaugurated its largest coast guard base on Sunday as a standoff between Iran and the United States continues to boost tensions in strategic Gulf waters. Prime Minister Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al-Thani and commander of US Naval Forces in the Middle East Vice Admiral Jim Malloy attended the ceremony at the […]

WASHINGTON: The United States, China and Russia have jointly welcomed Pakistan to a four-party consultation process that seeks to end the 18-year-old war and decades of blood-letting in Afghanistan, says a joint statement issued in Washington. “China, Russia and the United States welcomed Pakistan joining the consultation and believe that Pakistan can play an important […]

ISLAMABAD: A two-day Track-II dialogue between Pakistan and India commenced on Friday. The dialogue, titled ‘Beyond Politics and Polemics New Beginning on a Difficult Trail’, was hosted by the Regional Peace Institute. The discussions were the first round of the initiative and the second round would be held in New Delhi in September. Six delegates […]

CHENNAI: A special 50-wagon train carrying 2.5 million litres of water arrived in Chennai on Friday, as the southern hub reels under one of its worst shortages in decades. The wagons were hauled by a special locomotive carrying a “Drinking Water for Chennai” banner on its front. Four special trains a day have been called […]