International

BEIJING: China placed all 17 million residents in one of its biggest cities under lockdown on Sunday, as virus cases doubled nationwide to nearly 3,400 and anxiety mounted over the resilience of its ‘zero-Covid’ approach in the face of the worst outbreak in two years. The southern tech hub of Shenzhen told all residents to stay at home as the …

WASHINGTON: Pakistan has urged the UN Security Council to focus on the ongoing violence against women in India-held Jammu and Kashmir. During a Security Council debate on the week-long International Women’s Day, Pakistan’s UN ambassador Munir Akram underlined the need to stop using sexual violence as a weapon in armed conflicts. “Less visible in the Security Council’s debate is the …

Russia’s military forces kept up their punishing campaign to capture Ukraine’s capital with fighting and artillery fire in Kyiv’s suburbs on Monday after an airstrike on a military base near the Polish border brought the war dangerously close to Nato’s doorstep. Residents of besieged Ukrainian cities held out hope that renewed diplomatic talks might open the way for more civilians to evacuate …

MARSEILLE: A Frenchman with a knife injured three police officers in the southern city of Marseille on Saturday, and was killed by police after repeatedly ignoring warning shots, authorities said. The reason for the attack was unclear. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin described a violent attack with a knife and said police were able to neutralise the assailant and avoid the …

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia confirmed on Saturday a 10-year travel ban for freed blogger and human rights activist Raif Badawi, who has become a symbol of freedom of expression around the world. Badawi, now 38, who was arrested and detained in Saudi Arabia in 2012 on charges of “insulting Islam”, was released on Friday. An interior ministry official said: “The sentence handed down …

WASHINGTON: The Afghan embassy in Washington, under severe financial pressure and cut off from the new Taliban government in Kabul, will close down in the coming week, a senior State Department official confirmed on Saturday. Its diplomats, holdovers from the old government, now have a month to apply for US visas before being deported — though not back to Afghanistan, …

PARIS: France, Britain and Germany warned Russia on Saturday that its demands to have its trade guaranteed with Iran risked the collapse of an almost-completed nuclear deal. Negotiators have reached the final stages of discussions to restore the so-called JCPOA deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear programme. However, last Saturday Russian Foreign Minister …

THE Evropeisky mall in Moscow was once a symbol of a Russia integrated into the global consumer economy, with atriums named after cities like London, Paris and Rome. But now large parts of the seven-story shopping centre have gone quiet after Western brands from Apple to Victorias Secret closed their Russian operations in the two weeks since the country invaded …

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it executed a record 81 people in one day for a variety of terrorism-related offences, exceeding the total number it sentenced to death last year. All had been “found guilty of committing multiple heinous crimes”, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported, saying they included convicts linked to the militant Islamic State (IS) group, or Al …

Pakistan gave Afghan nationals until Tuesday to cross the Torkham border — which connects Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) with Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province — on the basis of their Afghan national identity cards, it emerged on Saturday. The local authorities had initially imposed an immediate ban on cross-border movement on the basis of the Afghan NICs. “All have been informed that there …