Chat app Discord said on Thursday it will introduce new artificial intelligence features that can summarize long conversations or add decorations to a user’s avatar, the latest move among tech companies to build generative AI tools. Generative AI, which has captured the attention of the tech industry, is a technology that can generate images, text or video in response to …

Bitcoin steadied on Thursday near its lowest since mid-February, after U.S. crypto-focused bank Silvergate said it would voluntarily liquidate, the latest in a series of high-profile crypto collapses triggered by the collapse of the FTX exchange. Silvergate Capital said on Wednesday it planned to close and voluntarily liquidate, after warning last week that it was evaluating its ability to operate as a …

India directed drug manufacturers to stop using propylene glycol sourced from the Delhi-based firm that supplied the ingredient to Marion Biotech, whose cough syrups were linked to deaths of 19 children in Uzbekistan, according to a government document seen by Reuters. Uzbekistan said in December that the children died after consuming Marion’s cough syrups, Ambronol and DOK-1 Max, which were …

Xi Jinping was handed a third term as Chinese president on Friday, capping a rise that has seen him become the country’s most powerful leader in generations. The appointment by China’s rubber-stamp parliament comes after Xi locked in another five years as head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October. Since then, the 69-year-old Xi has weathered widespread protests over his zero-Covid policy …

WARSAW: John Paul II “knew” about cases of child abuse by Catholic priests in Poland and helped cover them up before becoming pope in 1978, a new book claims. Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek spent more than a decade combing through archives and interviewing victims and witnesses for “Maxima Culpa”, which has sparked an outcry in the pope’s native Poland. “I …

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile on Thursday, Seoul’s military said, Pyongyang’s latest show of force just days before South Korea and the United States kick off major joint military exercises. Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their worst points in decades, with the nuclear-armed North conducting ever more provocative banned weapons tests as Seoul moved …

KHYBER: Pakistani and Afghan authorities have agreed to work together to improve and facilitate cross-border trade and pedestrian movement. The agreement came during a meeting of the Pak-Afghan Border Management Committee in the Afghan customs offices in Gumrak area on Wednesday. The Pakistani delegation comprised Lt-Colonel Mujtaba, retired Colonel Sattar of the National Logistic Cell, ADC Rizwan and officials of …

TUNIS: Fourteen people from sub-Saharan Africa drowned in the Mediterranean, authorities said on Thursday in Tunisia, where black migrants have faced a wave of violence since an inflammatory speech by President Kais Saied. The drama occurred off the coast of Tunisia’s Sfax region, where a spokesman for the court in charge of the investigation said the dead were from two …

An ex-US Marine has described the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as a “catastrophe”, telling the lawmakers “there was inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence’’, BBC News reported. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was critically injured at the Kabul airport blast on Aug 27, told the Republican-led hearing on the evacuation from Afghanistan that he was thrown four feet onto the ground but …

The Pakistani rupee appreciated by Rs1.53 against the US dollar as interbank markets closed on Friday with analysts attributing the recovery to a rise in the central bank forex reserves and expectations that the government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would reach an agreement soon. After sliding by 1.13 per cent a day earlier, the dollar closed at Rs280.77, …