International

PRISTINA: Nearly a week after deadly clashes in Kosovo triggered one of the gravest escalations in the former breakaway province in years, the opportunity for reconciliation between ethnic Albanians and Serbs seemed as distant as ever. The killing of a Kosovo police officer and an ensuing gun battle at a monastery brought years of distrust and bitterness to the surface …

One of the co-founders of collapsed cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital has been apprehended in Singapore and jailed for four months, according to the company’s liquidator. The Singapore-based company filed for bankruptcy last year when its fortunes suffered a sharp decline after a massive sell-off of assets it had bet on as prices nosedived in crypto markets. Su Zhu …

KUALA LUMPUR: Hundreds of forest fires in Indonesia have caused haze to reach areas of Malaysia where it has worsened air quality, Kuala Lumpur’s top environment official has said. Outbreaks of smog-belching forest fires in 2019 caused Malaysia to say it would pressure Indonesia to combat the annual problem, which is often caused by blazes lit to clear agricultural land. …

The US Dollar (USD) was on track to post its biggest quarterly gain in a year on Friday and gains for the 11th consecutive week as investors priced in the likelihood of a still solid economy and higher rates for longer. The greenback retraced most earlier losses against a basket of currencies to be only slightly lower on the day, …

YEREVAN: Armenia said Saturday that over 100,000 people have fled Nagorno-Karabakh, meaning nearly all the official population of the ethnic Armenian enclave has left since Azerbaijan seized back control. Nazeli Baghdasaryan, a spokeswoman for Armenia’s prime minister, said the number of refugees entering the country over the past week had reached 100,417. The exodus comes after the Armenian enclave — …

A regional security meeting on Afg­han­istan, hosted by Russia with participation from other regional countries including China and India, has called upon the interim Afghan government to take effective measures to “dismantle” all sorts of terrorist groups based in the country and to ensure that their territory no longer serves as “terrorism hotspot”. The call for enhanced security measures arose …

Israel and Saudi Arabia are moving towards the outline of a historic US-brokered deal to normalise relations after decades of hostility, the White House said on Friday. President Joe Biden is hoping to transform the Middle East — and score an election-year diplomatic victory — by securing recognition of the Jewish state by Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites. …

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Thursday he was sure US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would raise the murder of a Sikh separatist leader with his Indian counterpart when the two meet later in the day. Trudeau made his remarks to reporters in Quebec, 10 days after he announced Canada suspected Indian government agents were linked to the murder of Hardeep Singh …

GENEVA: Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbekistan’s former president, was on Thursday indicted in Switzerland in a vast case of corruption, fraud and organised crime, prosecutors said. The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland (OAG) announced in a statement that following a lengthy criminal investigation, it had filed an indictment against Karimova along with an Uzbek telecoms executive. “The …

QUETTA: During a full-day meeting in the Iranian border town of Mirjaveh on Thursday, the Pak-Iran Joint Border Trade Committee deliberated on border concerns, the growth of bilateral trade, and improvements in immigration procedures and transportation. Abdul Qadir Memon, the chief collector Customs Balochistan, headed the Pakistani delegation, while the Iranian side was led by Javed Haideri, the director general …