Category: World

WASHINGTON: China poses the most serious intelligence threat to the United States and is seeking to “steal its way up the economic ladder” at US expe­n­se, FBI Director Chris­to­pher Wray said on Friday. Wray, speaking at the Cou­­ncil on Foreign Rela­tions (CFR) in Washington, said China poses a “multi-layered” threat to US interests. “Economic espionage […]

BEIRUT: Air strikes by regime ally Russia killed 10 civilians in the jihadist-held region of Idlib in northwestern Syria on Friday, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said those killed included two children. The raids took the lives of three civilians including a boy on the outskirts of […]

As the call to prayer echoed through the subdued streets of Sri Lanka’s capital Colombo, crowds of Muslims were greeted with an unusual sight: their golden-domed mosque flanked by soldiers armed with assault rifles. Security has ballooned in the seaside capital since a series of coordinated suicide attacks at hotels and churches on Easter Sunday […]

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said that his government will, if necessary, seek Pakistan’s help to trace the terrorists involved in the recent Easter Sunday bombings and eliminate them. In an exclusive interview with the Hindustan Times published on Friday, Wickremesinghe pointed out that Pakistan had, in the past, “fully supported Sri Lanka’s war on […]

Kim Jong Un has accused the United States of acting in “bad faith” in talks on its nuclear arsenal, North Korean state media said on Friday as he left Russia following his first summit with President Vladimir Putin. Kim’s armoured train departed the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok a day after talks that saw […]

US special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad on Friday said he “greatly appreciate[s]” a statement issued by Prime Minister Imran Khan a day earlier in which the latter regretted a new wave of violence “from all sides” in Afghanistan and reiterated Islamabad’s support for the peace process in the war-torn country. “Greatly appreciate @ImranKhanPTI’s statement yesterday on Afghanistan,” Khalilzad […]

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) overstate their oil capacities, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported on Friday. The comments were in reaction to expectations the two countries would fill any supply gap caused by a tightening of the United States sanctions on Iran. Washington has decided not to […]

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday filed nomination papers in a Hindu holy city, hoping to hold onto the seat for a second time in the general elections. He prayed at a temple before arriving at the election office in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh state, flanked by Amit Shah, president of his Hindu nationalist […]

Sri Lankan officials revised the death toll from the Easter Sunday bombings down by about 100 on Thursday, blaming the difficulty in identifying body parts at bomb scenes for the earlier inaccurate number. The new official figure was 253, down from an earlier 359, Deputy Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene said. He blamed inaccurate data provided by morgues […]

Prime Minister Imran Khan, in his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing on Friday, called for greater attention to tackling climate change and poverty as Pakistan and China enter the next phase of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). The prime minister appreciated the significance of China’s […]