International

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a two-day visit to France on Thursday where he will attend the traditional Bastille Day military parade as guest of honour and discuss major new defence deals. French President Emmanuel Macron’s red-carpet welcome for the Hindu nationalist leader comes weeks after Modi was given the rare honour of a White House state dinner in Washington — …

Supplies of drinking water in the Indian capital will fall by a quarter on Thursday and Friday because three treatment plants have been flooded, the city government said, as the Yamuna river overflowed after incessant rain. Delhi’s river is at its highest level in 45 years after unusually heavy downpours in neighbouring states like Haryana, to the north. The city …

RAWALPINDI: Jazeera Airways’ first flight arrived at Islamabad International Airport (IIAP) from Kuwait on Wednesday, commencing a new chapter in the airline’s operations. A spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said the Kuwaiti airline’s flight J9-511 had 163 passengers onboard when it landed at IIAP around 4.30am. Jazeera Airways will operate two weekly flights — one on Wednesday and the other …

Torrential downpours have unleashed flash floods on the US Northeast that washed out roadways, overwhelmed rivers prompted 50 swift boat rescues, and killed a woman who was swept away in front of her fiance, officials said. More than 13 million Americans were under flood watches and warnings from Eastern New York state to Boston and Western Maine to the northeast, …

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said on Tuesday that the desecration of the Holy Quran amounted to the incitement of religious hatred as the UN Human Rights Council debated a motion in the wake of a recent incident of the holy book’s burning in Sweden. Last month, a man desecrated the Holy Quran in Sweden’s capital Stockholm, resulting in strong condemnation from several Muslim states, …

LONDON: UK unemployment rose back to four per cent in the three months to the end of May, official data showed Tuesday, as the economy struggles with stubbornly-high inflation. The unemployment rate increased from 3.8pc in the three months to the end of April, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a statement, dashing expectations for no change. The …

TUNIS: The bodies of two migrants have been found in a desert region near Tunisia’s border with Algeria, a judicial official and a witness said on Tuesday. Hundreds of migrants from sub-Saharan countries have fled or been forced out of Tunisia’s port city of Sfax after racial tensions flared following the July 3 killing of a Tunisian man in an …

TAIPEI: Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn withdrew from a $19.4 billion deal with India’s Vedanta to make semiconductors in the South Asian nation owing to “challenging gaps”, it announced on Tuesday. The world’s top iPhone assembler signed an agreement in September with Vedanta to set up a chip factory — which would also produce display screens for phones and tablets — …

PARIS: Scientists on Tuesday designated a small body of water near Toronto, Canada as ground-zero for the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch defined by humanity’s massive and destabilising impact on the planet. Layered sediment at the bottom of Lake Crawford — laced with microplastics, fly-ash spread by burning oil and coal, and the detritus of nuclear bomb explosions — is …

LONDON: A crisis at Britain’s BBC over alleged payments by an unnamed star to a young person for explicit images deepened on Tuesday when its news division reported that the male presenter had sent abusive messages to a second person, aged in their early 20s. The new revelation came after the BBC sought to defend its handling of the growing scandal, after acknowledging that …