International

SAINT AIGNAN: The first giant panda to have been born in France received an emotional send-off on Tuesday as he left his French zoo ahead of the long haul flight back to his ancestral China. Yuan Meng, who was born in 2017 in the Beauval zoo in the Loire region of France, was cheered by visitors and zoo staff as …

Chinese short-video app TikTok is allowing users to create text-only posts, in the latest attempt by a social media firm to capitalise on the turmoil at Twitter since its buyout by Elon Musk and the recent announcement of its rebranding. The move would allow TikTok users to choose from a variety of backgrounds for their text posts that can feature hashtags …

RHODES: A Greek water-bombing plane crashed on Tuesday while battling a forest fire on the island of Evia as hundreds of firefighters struggled to beat back blazes still raging in Rhodes and Corfu amid a new wave of soaring temperatures. The fire department said the Canadair aircraft crashed into a ravine close to where the fire started some three days …

LAHORE: Pilgrimage-related activities resumed at the Gurdawara Darbar Sahib on Tuesday after Indian authorities reopened their side of the Kartarpur corridor. The Indian government had closed the corridor on July 20 after floodwaters entered fields of crops near the corridor. According to a senior official of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB), Indian authorities opened the gate of their side …

JAKARTA: Represe­ntatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban government travelled to Indonesia this month on an unofficial visit, the foreign ministry in Jakarta said on Tuesday, despite Kabul saying they held meetings with politicians in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation. “My understanding is that they were in Jakarta informally for internal matters with the Afgha­nistan mission here,” said Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman …

China offered no explanation for the sacking of foreign minister Qin Gang on Wednesday while scrubbing mentions of him from a government website. Qin — who has not been seen in public for over a month — was removed from office by Beijing’s top lawmaking body on Tuesday after just 207 days in the job. That followed weeks of speculation that the …

NEW YORK: A former New York gynaecologist accused of assaulting dozens of women, including the wife of a onetime US presidential candidate, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday for sexual abuse. Robert Hadden, 64, was convicted in January of enticing patients to travel across state lines for examinations in Manhattan where he would sexually assault them. Federal …

SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman on Monday launched the Worldcoin crypto project that relies on an eye scan to verify a user’s identity. Worldcoin comes as the cryptocurrency industry is suffering hard times after the spectacular collapse of FTX and various legal cases against the sector’s biggest players. “The Worldcoin Foundation today announced that Worldcoin, a project co-founded by Sam …

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s top court has ordered Nobel laureate and microfinance pioneer Muham­mad Yunus to pay more than $1 million in taxes on a $7m donation made to three charitable trusts, lawyers said Monday. Yunus, 83, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering micro-credit bank, but he has fallen out with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has …

BARCELONA: Most pollsters saw Spain’s far-right Vox in the role, but none imagined it would be exiled Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont emerging as kingmaker from Sunday’s inconclusive snap election. Although the right-wing Popular Party (PP) is demanding the right to rule after winning the vote, it seems a remote possibility given that it didn’t manage to secure an absolute majority, …