International

WASHINGTON: Republican lawmakers launched their campaign for the 2024 presidential elections this weekend by underlining President Joe Biden’s role in the withdrawal of US and Nato troops from Afghanistan. On Saturday, Speaker Kevin McCarthy of the US House of Representatives ordered that flags at the US Capitol be put at half-staff in honor of 13 American service members who died …

Eight US marines were in hospital on Monday — one of them in intensive care — following a military aircraft crash in northern Australia that killed three of their comrades, authorities said. Twenty three marines were on board the Boeing MV-22B Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft when it crashed on Melville Island, north of Darwin, on Sunday morning during a military exercise for locally based troops. …

A school on Indonesia’s main island has partially shaved the heads of more than a dozen girls, its headmaster said on Monday, after they were accused of wearing their Islamic hijab headscarves incorrectly. Activists say Muslim and non-Muslim girls have been forced for years to wear a hijab in conservative parts of the nation of 270 million people, which moved …

BEIRUT: Rebels killed at least 11 soldiers in northwestern Syria on Saturday when they detonated explosives placed in tunnels dug underneath army positions before attacking them, a monitor said. The attack involving militants from the Ansar al-Tawhid group and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) took place in the south of Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The …

THE United States has condemned Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir for claiming his rights in the occupied West Bank are more important than those of Palestinians, BBC News reported. The State Department said it strongly condemned the “inflammatory comments” and “all racist rhetoric”. “My right, and that of my wife and children, to travel on the roads of Judea and …

KIHEI: Hawaii officials have released the names of 338 people still missing more than two weeks after the deadliest US wildfire in more than a century swept through the resort town of Lahaina. The list, compiled by the FBI, includes only people whose full names are known and who were reported missing by someone for whom authorities have verified contact …

WASHINGTON: Former US president Donald Trump’s historic mugshot, posted by a Georgia courthouse on Thursday evening, is being turned into T-shirts, shot glasses, mugs, posters and even bobblehead dolls by friends and foes alike. The shot of Trump with a red tie, glistening hair, and an icy scowl was taken as the Republican presidential front-runner was arrested on more than …

BEIJING: Chinese President Xi Jinping made a rare visit to Xinjiang on Saturday, state media reported, calling on officials to conserve “hard-won social stability” in a troubled region where Beijing is accused of severe human rights abuses. The Chinese government has pursued a years-long campaign against what it describes as terrorism and Islamic extremism in the northwestern region, detaining large …

WASHINGTON: A Pakistani physician was sentenced on Friday to 18 years in prison for attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organisation, the militant Islamic State group. Court documents showed Mohammad Masood, 31, a licensed medical doctor in Pakistan, was formerly employed as a research coordinator at a clinic in Rochester, Minn­esota. Between January and March 2020, he …

UNITED NATIONS: The outlawed Tehreek-i-Tali­ban Pakistan (TTP) and other gro­ups affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda are providing Nato-calibre weapons to the militant Islamic State (IS) gro­up — also known by its Arabic acronym Daesh, acc­ording to a UN report discussed at a Security Council meeting in New York. Two UN counter-terrorism officials told the Secu­rity Council on Friday …