International

STOCKHOLM: A 22-year-old Afghan man was remanded in custody in Sweden on Friday, after he was accused of stabbing seven people earlier in the week, the district court said. The man was arrested after the attack on Wednesday afternoon in the quiet town of Vetlanda in the south of Sweden, home to some 13,000 people. “He was remanded in custody, …

LAHORE: WhatsApp has announced that it has made private and secure one-to-one voice and video calls available on its desktop app. According to a blog on WhatsApp’s official website, the company says: “Throughout the last year we’ve seen significant increases in people calling one another on WhatsApp, often for long conversations. Last New Year’s Eve, we broke the record for …

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has inducted a third Pakistani-American, Dilawar Syed, into his team, says a White House media statement. Mr Syed will serve as the deputy administrator of the Small Business Admini­stration (SBA), if confirmed by the US Senate. Confirming his nomination on Twitter, Mr Syed said he was “deeply humbled & honored” and will “put my heart and …

NEW DELHI: India expects to start full-scale operations at Iran’s Chabahar general cargo port it has built by the end of May, the country’s shipping minister said in a boost for regional trade. India has been developing a part of the port on Iran’s south-eastern coast along the Gulf of Oman as a way to transport goods to Iran, but …

WASHINGTON: The United States has assured the international community that it’s following the developments in Jammu and Kashmir very closely and continues to support direct talks between India and Pakistan on the issue. The Kashmir issue has been raised regularly in the daily news briefings of the US State Department since the Biden administration came to power on Jan 20. …

LONDON: Cryptocurrency trading volumes soared by 17% last month in the wake of Tesla’s $1.5 billion bitcoin bet, with larger exchanges taking a growing share of the overall volumes, data showed on Friday. Trading volumes jumped to $2.7 trillion in February, with volumes at major exchanges jumping over 35% to $2.4 trillion, researcher CryptoCompare said. Smaller exchanges saw volumes slump …

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday called upon the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) to devise a joint strategy for ensuring equitable access and distribution of Covid-19 vaccine for the public good. The prime minister, in his address to the virtual 14th ECO Summit themed ‘Regional Economic Cooperation in the aftermath of Covid-19’, stressed the need for mobilising the resources …

ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Thursday again denied any change in the government’s position on the Kashmir dispute and said that outreach to the international community on the issue would continue. “Let me reiterate that there is no change in Pakistan’s principled position on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognised dispute which needs to …

VIENNA: European nations will not go ahead with a planned resolution criticising Iran at this week’s meeting of the UN nuclear watchdog, diplomatic sources said on Thursday, as efforts were underway to revive an ailing 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers on its nuclear programme. France, Britain and Germany had planned to introduce a resolution at a meeting of …

ISTANBUL: Nine Turkish soldiers were killed and four others wounded when their military helicopter cras­hed in the southeast of the country on Thursday, the defence ministry said. Television images from the crash site showed the ground blanketed in snow and visibility hampered by thick clouds in the mountainous region. Ruling AKP party lawmaker Tolga Agar, who sits on the Turkish …