International

US President Joe Biden will hold first-ever joint talks on Friday with the leaders of Australia, India and Japan, boosting an emerging four-way alliance often cast as a bulwark against China. It will be one of the first summits, albeit in virtual format, for Biden, who has vowed to revive US alliances in the wake of the disarray of Donald …

Britain’s monarchy maintained its silence on Tuesday, after Meghan and Prince Harry accused a family member of making a racist remark about their son and said she had been alienated to the point of contemplating suicide. Oprah Winfrey’s tell-all TV interview with the couple has dragged the royals into the biggest crisis since the death of Harry’s mother Diana in 1997, when …

China took the lead in terms of the 5G market in 2020, with 200 million new 5G connections, accounting for 87 per cent of the global total, and the number is expected to hit 822 million by 2025, according to a report released by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association on Feb 22. Rapid growth of 5G application in …

ISLAMABAD: United States Special Envoy for Afghan Reconciliation Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Monday visited Pakistan as part of Washington’s new diplomatic push on the Afghan peace process. Khalilzad met Army Chief Gen Qamar Bajwa at the General Headquarters. Besides the senior military and intelligence leadership, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security Moeed Yusuf and Special Representative for …

NEW DELHI: Thousands of women farmers held sit-ins and a hunger strike in India’s capital on Monday in protests on International Women’s Day against new agricultural laws. The demonstrations were held at multiple sites on the fringes of New Delhi where tens of thousands of farmers have camped for more than three months to protest against the laws they say …

BRASILIA: Humans have degraded or destroyed roughly two-thirds of the world’s original tropical rainforest cover, new data reveals raising alarm that a key natural buffer against climate change is quickly vanishing. The forest loss is also a major contributor of climate-warming emissions, with the dense tropical forest vegetation representing the largest living reservoir of carbon. Logging and land conversion, mainly …

KABUL: Nearly 20 percent of Afghan women journalists have quit or lost their jobs in the past six months, a media watchdog group said on Monday, as a wave of murders targeting the press has intensified in the war-torn country. The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee said that more than 300 women had left the industry in recent months, citing the …

WASHINGTON: The United States and South Korea have reached agreement in principle on a new arrangement for sharing the cost of the American troop presence, which is intended as a bulwark against the threat of North Korean aggression, both countries announced. The State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs said the deal includes a negotiated increase in Seoul’s share of the …

Frustrated by a stalled peace process and escalating violence, the US has presented an eight-page draft peace agreement to Afghanistan’s warring sides for review. The US told the parties to come to Turkey in the coming weeks ready to move on it, according to Afghans on both sides of the table. The draft was obtained by The Associated Press on Monday. The …

YANGON: Three anti-coup protesters were shot dead in Myanmar on Monday as demonstrators across the country sought to paralyse the economy with strike following a weekend of night raids and arrests. The country has been in turmoil since a February 1 coup ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and triggered mass protests against the new military junta. The police …