International

An 18-year-old Afghan student endured Taliban taunts and insults at the weekend as she staged a solo protest against the ban on women attending university. “For the first time in my life, I felt so proud, strong, and powerful because I was standing against them and demanding a right that God has given us,” Marwa told AFP, asking not to be …

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group has handed over a man suspected of killing an Irish United Nations peacekeeper earlier this month, a security official said on Sunday. Private Sean Rooney, 23, was killed and three others injured on December 14 when their UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) vehicle was attacked near the village of Al-Aqbiya in the country’s south, …

MONTREAL: More than 50 people have been hospitalised in western Canada after a passenger bus crashed on a highway, provincial authorities said. The cause of the Saturday evening accident, which occurred on a highway some 330 kilometres (200 miles) east of Vancouver in an area of British Columbia hit by days of bad winter weather, has yet to be provided. …

PARIS: A French man suspected of killing three Kurds in a Paris shooting last week has confessed to a “pathological” hatred for foreigners, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said on Sunday. The 69-year-old man was due to appear before a judge on Monday, prosecutors said. The suspect spent nearly a day in a psychiatric facility before being returned to police custody on Sunday …

LONDON: King Charles III has hailed the “heartfelt solidarity” of people across the recession-hit UK struggling with a worsening cost of living crisis, in his first Christmas Day message as monarch. Addressing the country from the Windsor Castle chapel where his mother, Elizabeth II, was interred in September, the 74-year-old also thanked people for the “love and sympathy” expressed following …

BEIJING: China will no longer publish daily figures for Covid-19 cases and deaths, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Sunday, ending a practice that began in early 2020. Cities across China are struggling with surging virus cases, resulting in pharmacy shelves stripped bare and overflowing hospitals and crematoriums, after Beijing suddenly dismantled its zero-Covid regime earlier this month. The …

MYKOLAIV: The very day Russia launched its attack on her country, Svitlana Taranova enlisted in the Ukrainian army in the southern city of Mykolaiv, her birthplace. “At 11 am on Feb 24 my contract with the territorial defence was signed,” said the former construction firm manager who is in her 50s. “It was the only possible decision, not a sacrifice,” …

KABUL: Marwa was just a few months away from becoming the first woman in her Afghan family to go to university — instead, she will watch achingly as her brother goes without her. Women are now banned from attending university in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where they have been steadily stripped of their freedoms over the past year. “Had they ordered women to be …

WASHINGTON: About 50 migrants were dropped off outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ home on Christmas Eve and some didn’t even have adequate winter clothes to stay warm in subzero temperatures. More came on Christmas Day. The migrants were brought all the way from Texas by the state’s conservative governor to remind the federal government that their immigration laws were not …

NEW DELHI/BANDA ACEH: At least 180 ethnic Rohingya stranded at sea for weeks after leaving Bangladesh in November are feared dead, as their rickety boat is thought to have sunk this month, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said. Citing unconfirmed reports, the agency said the “unseaworthy” boat probably sank after it went missing in the sea. “Relatives have lost …