WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he will seek a second White House term in 2024, a decision that will test whether Americans are ready to give the 80-year-old Democrat, already the oldest US president ever, another four years in office. Biden made his announcement in a slickly produced video released by his new campaign team, in which he …

NEW YORK: Donald Trump went on trial on Tuesday, where the writer E. Jean Carroll accuses the former US president in a civil lawsuit of raping her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Jury selection began in Manhattan federal court in the former Elle magazine advice columnist’s case, where Carroll is also accusing Trump of defamation. Trump, …

TOKYO: A Japanese startup attempting the first private landing on the Moon said on Wednesday it had lost communication with its spacecraft and assumed the lunar mission had failed. Ispace said that it could not establish communication with the unmanned Hakuto-R lunar lander after its expected landing time, a frustrating end to a mission that began with a launch from …

TRIPOLI: At least 57 bodies, including those of Pakistanis, have been washed ashore after two migrant boats sank in the Mediterranean off different towns in western Libya, a coast guard officer and an aid worker said on Tuesday. One survivor, Bassam Mahm­oud from Egypt, said there were about 80 passengers on one of the boats that set off for Europe …

WASHINGTON: Taliban Fore­ign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi had a detailed meeting with Pakistan’s former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa before asking India to send back its diplomats and technical staff to Kabul, says a new book on Afghanistan’s de facto rulers. The Return of the Taliban reveals “the pivotal decisions leading to the Taliban’s seizure of power” and describes “how …

Taliban government forces have killed the militant Islamic State group mastermind of a devastating suicide bomb attack at the Kabul airport during the chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, the White House said on Tuesday. The bomber detonated a device among packed crowds at the airport’s perimeter as they tried to flee Afghanistan on August 26, 2021. The blast …

A ship carrying 37 Pakistani nationals from Sudan — where fighting between the army and paramilitaries has killed and wounded hundreds — arrived in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah on Wednesday, the Foreign Office (FO) said. “Evacuation plan for Pakistani nationals in Sudan continues. The ship carrying 37 Pakistani nationals from Port Sudan arrives in Jeddah,” it said in a tweet.   …

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Asim Munir visited the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army and met the PLA commander on Wednesday. They discussed regional stability and military cooperation. The army chief, who is in China on a four-day official visit, arrived in the neighbouring country on Tuesday. In a press release issued today, the military’s media wing said that upon …

A powerful Iranian cleric — a member of the Assembly of Experts that selects the country’s supreme leader — has been killed in an armed attack, officials said on Wednesday. “Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was killed this morning in an armed attack… the assailant was also arrested and is now being investigated,” IRNA news agency reported, citing the political and security official …

SWAT: The twin blasts that struck a counter-terrorism facility and killed several people in the Kabal town of Swat were caused by electrical short circuit at a munitions warehouse within the premises, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police have found in a preliminary investigation, ruling out a militant attack, as initially suggested. The number of deaths from the Monday incident has risen to 17 …