International

BERLIN: German divers who recently fished an Enigma encryption machine out of the Baltic Sea, used by the Nazis to send coded messages during World War II, handed their rare find over to a museum for restoration on Friday. The legendary code machine was discovered last month during a search for abandoned fishing nets in the Bay of Gelting in …

BRUSSELS: European doubts over a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain boiled over on Friday with France threatening a veto as tricky negotiations entered what could be their final hours. As night fell in London, EU and UK negotiators Michel Barnier and David Frost were locked in last-minute debates over fishing rights, fair trade rules and an enforcement mechanism to govern …

PARIS: Global coronavirus infections passed 65 million on Friday and countries doubled down on restrictions, even as plans to roll out vaccines gathered pace. Joe Biden said he would ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days when he takes over as president of the United States, the world’s worst-hit country from a pandemic that has now killed more than …

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he hoped France would get rid of Emmanuel Macron as soon as possible, the latest salvo in an escalating war of words between the two leaders. Turkey is embroiled in a series of disputes with France and its EU partners, from tensions in the eastern Mediterranean to the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. …

Eighteen people have died after being trapped in a mine in China’s southwestern city of Chongqing, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday, the region’s second such accident in just over two months. The dead were among 24 people trapped underground by excessive levels of carbon monoxide gas at the Diaoshuidong coal mine, the agency said, adding that one survivor had …

Bahrain will not allow the import of Israeli goods produced in settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, state news agency BNA reported, disavowing comments made by the Gulf state’s trade minister earlier this week. Bahrain’s Industry, Commerce and Tourism Minister Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani had voiced openness to settlement imports, adding that Manama would make no distinction between products produced in Israel or …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Thursday the recent assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist violated international law. “Such acts not only run contrary to all norms of interstate relations and International Law but also threaten the peace and stability of an already fragile region,” Foreign Office spokesman Zahid Chaudhri said at his weekly media briefing. He was reacting to the assassination of …

ISLAMABAD: In what appears to be a last resort, Pakistan Customs has linked curbing the menace of under-invoicing by the country’s importers to the inking of an Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Over the past few years UAE ports have emerged as a leading source of under-invoicing for Pakistani importers who declare their products …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan experienced a significant increase in methamphetamine seizures bet­ween 2016 and 2018, and quantities of the drug seized increased more than 21 times from about 133kg in 2016 to 2.9 tonnes in 2018, reveals the ‘Global Synthetic Drugs Assessment 2020’. The report published by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) on Thursday says the spike in seizures …

NEW DELHI: A fourth round of talks between the Indian government and 40 farmers’ unions over divisive farm laws failed to make headway on Thursday, but a cabinet minister said they would continue discussions on Saturday. In India’s biggest farm unrest in years, tens of thousands of growers are protesting on the outskirts of the capital Delhi against the laws …