DHAKA: Hundreds of Bangladeshi firefighters battled an inferno that raged through a popular clothing market in the capital Dhaka on Tuesday and blanketed the city’s oldest neighbourhoods in black smoke. No fatalities have been reported so far, but shop owners and fire officials told reporters that the famous Bongo Bazar and three adjacent markets had been almost completely gutted in …

WASHINGTON: The renowned Time magazine on Tuesday published a cover story on former prime minister Imran Khan in its latest edition, putting his picture on the title page with the caption: ‘The Astonishing Saga of Imran Khan’. The article caught the attention of PTI leaders as well, and former information minister Fawad Chaudhry immediately put it on his Twitter account, along with …

NEW YORK: Former president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a historic moment for the United States on Tuesday, as prosecutors accused him of paying two women to suppress their accounts of sexual encounters with him. The indictment, unsealed after Trump’s court appearance along with a statement of facts, alleged that Trump …

Iran said on Tuesday it had appointed an ambassador to the United Arab Emirates for the first time since 2016, amid a realignment of relations between Gulf states and Iran. The move comes after the UAE in August moved to upgrade ties and said it was returning its ambassador to Tehran. The UAE downgraded relations with Iran after Saudi Arabia severed ties …

Indian police have arrested five men accused of conducting a human sacrifice, nearly four years after the discovery of the victim’s headless body at a Hindu temple left officers baffled. Shanti Shaw, 64, was killed and decapitated with a machete in 2019 after visiting the temple in Guwahati, a city in India’s remote northeast. Police made no headway in the …

Israeli police arrested more than 350 people early Wednesday after clashes at Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque, a police spokesperson said. In a statement, police said they had “arrested and removed over 350 individuals that violently barricaded” themselves inside the mosque in the Old City of annexed east Jerusalem. Those arrested included “masked individuals, stone and firework hurlers/throwers, and individuals suspected …

The Foreign Office (FO) on Wednesday took exception to British Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s “discriminatory and xenophobic” remarks on Pakistani men, saying that they painted a “misleading picture”. A day earlier, Braverman said that British-Pakistani men “hold cultural values at odds with British values”. During a Sky News interview about plans to tackle child sexual abuse, she spoke about “the predominance of British-Pakistani males …

ISLAMABAD: After serving for almost a year as special assistant to the prime minister (SAPM), Fahd Husain on Tuesday stepped down from the position for personal reasons. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif accepted his resignation and hailed his service as SAPM. “I have stepped down as Special Assistant to PM after productive stint of a year. Grateful to PM Shehbaz for …

KOHAT/LOWER DIR/DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police have begun an investigation into the martyrdom of two Kohat policemen in Monday night militant attack. Also, an official of the traffic police was martyred in a gun attack in Lower Dir district, while a militant was killed and two injured in a police crackdown in Dera Ismail Khan district. SHO of …

ISLAMABAD: In a una­n­imous judgement, a three-member bench of the Sup­reme Court led by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial on Tuesday fixed May 14 as the new date for elections to the Punjab Assembly, as the apex court quashed the Election Commission of Pakistan’s (ECP) decision to extend the polls date from April 10 to Oct 8. However, for the elections in …