SEOUL: Pregnant women had C-sections cancelled and cancer treatments were postponed on Wednesday as the number of South Korean trainee doctors to walk off the job over proposed reforms swelled, officials and local reports said. Almost 9,000 junior doctors — 71 per cent of the trainee workforce — have now quit, said Seoul’s Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo, part …

MADRID: Hundreds of tractors rolled into Madrid on Wednesday for fresh protests by Spanish farmers angered by what they say is unfair competition, with similar moves taking place in France, Poland and Greece. Spain’s Union of Unions syndicate rallied farmers at the crack of dawn, demanding fair product prices and competition with non-EU importers, reporters said. “We have to protest …

BEIRUT/DAMASCUS: Israeli airstrikes killed four people in Lebanon and Syria on Wednesday, media and security sources said. One of the strikes killed a woman and a child in south Lebanon, sources said, days after Hezbollah vowed to inflict a price on Israel for killing civilians in the conflict across the Israeli-Lebanese border. The woman and girl were killed in the …

LONDON: A UK parliamentary committee has raised alarm over the “savagery” in Gaza after returning from a visit to Al-Arish in Egypt’s Sinai desert his week. Members of the International Development Committee, which examines FCDO expenditure, visited Al-Arish which is effectively a logistics hub for aid going into the tightly controlled crossing into Gaza. MPs also visited a hospital on …

The Kremlin on Thursday said Joe Biden’s remark about President Vladimir Putin debased the United States and those who use such vocabulary — and was a poor attempt to appear like a “Hollywood cowboy”. Biden called Putin a “crazy SOB” during a fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, warning there is always the threat of nuclear conflict but that the …

Social media platform X said on Thursday it took down certain accounts and posts following an order by the Indian government, which local media reports say are linked to ongoing protests by farmers demanding higher prices for crops. The platform formerly known as Twitter did not provide details of the removals but said it disagreed with the action and that …

SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Wednesday released new artificial intelligence (AI) models that outside developers potentially can fashion as their own, following a similar move by Meta Platforms and others. The Alphabet subsidiary said individuals and businesses can build AI software based on its new family of “open models” called Gemma, for free. The company is making key technical data such …

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to fully restore the services of social media platform X (formerly Twitter) across the country. X remains disrupted in many areas of Pakistan for the sixth consecutive day. According to monitoring website Downdetector, the disruptions were reported in Rawalpindi, Karachi, Gujranwala and Lahore among other cities. During a …

The Supreme Court on Thursday deplored “unfortunate” criticism aimed at it over a judgement ordering the release of a person accused of distributing supposedly proscribed religious literature. Religious parties, social media users and the banned militant Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan group recently took exception to the SC decision, with the reaction coming almost two weeks after the apex court’s order on an appeal against a verdict …

The PTI on Thursday announced that it would be holding fresh intra-party elections on March 3 (Sunday). After a long battle and marathon hearings in the run-up to the February 8 general elections, the PTI was stripped of its symbol last month when the Supreme Court upheld the Election Commission of Pakistan’s decision to declare the party’s internal polls as “unconstitutional”. In …