LONDON: Britain’s finance and health ministers resigned on Tuesday in what could spell the end for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s premiership after he had tried to apologise for the latest scandal to blight his administration. Both finance minister Rishi Sunak and health minister Sajid Javid sent resignation letters within minutes of each other to the prime minister, in which both …

China’s ambassador announced trade and investment plans for Afghanistan on Tuesday, a public endorsement for doing business in the Taliban-controlled country after an earthquake drew attention to the humanitarian consequences of Western sanctions. At a rare press conference alongside the Taliban administration’s acting minister for disaster management, Ambassador Wang Yu announced $8 million in aid for relief from the June 22 earthquake …

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka is bankrupt and the acute pain of its unprecedented economic crisis will linger until at least the end of next year, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament on Tuesday. The island nation’s 22 million people have endured months of galloping inflation and lengthy power cuts after the government ran out of foreign currency to import vital goods. …

BERLIN: Police across several European countries on Tuesday launched a major coordinated crackdown on criminal networks suspected of using small boats to smuggle people into the UK, British and German authorities said. Officers staged dawn raids in Belgium, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Germany, said police in the northwestern German city of Osnabrueck, considered a hub for the traffickers. Britain’s …

PARIS: France repatriated 35 children and 16 mothers from camps in Syria holding family members of suspected jihadists of the militant Islamic State group on Tuesday in the largest such operation by Paris after pressure from campaigners. The French government had long refused mass repatriations of the hundreds of French children detained in Kurdish-controlled camps, dealing with them on a …

BRUSSELS: Nato’s 30 allies signed an accession protocol for Finland and Sweden on Tuesday, allowing them to join the nuclear-armed alliance once parliaments ratify the decision, the most significant expansion of the alliance since the 1990s. The signing at Nato headquarters follows a deal with Turkey at last week’s Nato summit in Madrid, where Ankara lifted its veto on the …

BEIJING: Top officials from the United States and China held a “candid” video call on Tuesday to discuss global economic challenges, especially regarding supply chains. The exchange between Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen came as President Joe Biden considers lifting some tariffs on imports from China to try and ease soaring inflation. The world’s …

PARIS: Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid on Tuesday urged French President Emmanuel Macron to revisit a 2018 proposal for a new Iran deal, saying the current diplomatic stalemate threatened a Middle East arms race. With US President Joe Biden trying to row back on his predecessor Donald Trump’s withdrawal from a 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Israeli officials have privately suggested …

KARACHI: In a shocking disclosure, the Karachi police revealed in its report on Tuesday that a young man, who was lynched by an angry mob in Qasba Colony a week ago, was an ‘innocent’ resident of the locality and deliberately framed for robbery by his neighbours due to a personal dispute. During the incident another man was also declared ‘bandit’ …

KHYBER: The issue surrounding the import of sacrificial animals from Afghanistan seems to be far from being resolved as veterinary workers have refused to examine around 5,000 sheep, which a group of tribal elders claimed to have brought along here on return from Kabul with the permission of Afghan authorities. The elders reached the Afghan capital on Saturday and returned …