International

A COURT in military-ruled Myanmar on Wednesday sentenced a photojournalist to 20 years in prison, his employer said, the longest known prison term handed down to a media professional since the 2021 army coup. Sai Zaw Thaike was arrested in late May in Rakhine state while he was reporting on the Cyclone Mocha’s impact. The specifics of the charges against …

ISTANBUL: The European Union’s enlargement commissioner told Turkiye on Wednesday to address issues around democracy and the rule of law if it wants to boost its drive to join the bloc. Ankara secured a pledge from Brussels to resurrect stalled membership negotiations in exchange for lifting its blockade of Sweden’s drive to join the Nato military alliance. Turkish President Recep …

PARIS: The number of people under 50 diagnosed with cancer has surged worldwide in the last three decades but it is not fully clear why, a study said on Wednesday. Cases of cancer among people aged 14 to 49 rose by nearly 80 percent, from 1.82 million to 3.26 million, between 1990 to 2019, according to the study published in …

VLOS: Storms have killed at least 14 people in Greece, Turkiye and Bulgaria, with a Greek region hit by more rain in 24 hours than it normally sees in a year, officials said on Wednesday. A period of extreme heat has given way to heavy storms, turning streets in north-western Turkiye into rivers and hitting Greece with unprecedented downpours as …

DUSHANBE: Tajikistan said on Wednesday that it had killed three members of a “terrorist group” who had infiltrated the country from neighbouring Afghanistan, the second such incident this year in the Central Asian nation. Tajikistan is a sparsely-populated, poor, mountainous ex-Soviet country where fears have risen that the return to power of the Taliban in its war-scarred southern neighbour could …

PARIS: An Iranian journalist who interviewed the father of Mahsa Amini said she was sexually assaulted during her latest arrest and was now on hunger strike in prison, according to an audio message published on Wednesday by several Persian media outlets and rights groups. Nazila Maroufian, 23, has been repeatedly targeted by the Iranian authorities since she published an interview with Amjad …

KYIV: A Russian strike killed at least 17 people at a market in east Ukraine Wednesday, officials said, in an attack that President Volodymyr Zelensky described as deliberate and “heinous”. Projectiles tore through the centre of Kostiantynivka — a town of nearly 70,000 people in the Donetsk region — hours after America’s top diplomat arrived in Kyiv to announce new …

Chinese tech giant Tencent on Thursday claimed its new chatbot had some capabilities on par with top US rival ChatGPT, as the global artificial intelligence race heats up. Tencent’s “Hunyuan Aide”, which it released to the public on Thursday, follows the similar ERNIE Bot rolled out by fellow Chinese company Baidu last month. Beijing introduced fresh regulations last month for AI developers, aiming …

Australia’s prime minister confirmed on Thursday he will visit China later this year after talks with China’s premier, who said Beijing was ready to resume bilateral exchanges after years of friction. The announcement by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the sidelines of a Southeast Asia summit in Indonesia came after a years-long break in relations over political and economic …

ISLAMABAD: The global trade finance gap grew to a record $2.5 trillion in 2022 from $1.7tr two years earlier, as rising interest rates, flagging economic prospects, inflation, and geopolitical volatility reduced the capacity of banks to deliver trade financing, according to a report released by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday. The “2023 Trade Finance Gaps, Growth and Jobs Survey” says …