International

LONDON: Britain’s Conservative government is expected to present on Tuesday (today) a new bill providing for the detention and swift deportation of asylum seekers who illegally enter the country via small boats, according to media reports. Despite Brexit-related promises to tighten control of its borders, Britain has seen a considerable uptick in such arrivals, logging a record 45,000 last year, …

The United States should change its “distorted” attitude towards China or “conflict and confrontation” will follow, China’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, while defending its stance on the war in Ukraine and defending its close ties with Russia. The US had been engaging in suppression and containment of China rather than engaging in fair, rule-based competition, Foreign Minister Qin Gang …

KYIV: Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin said his representative had been denied access to the headquarters of Russia’s military command in Ukraine on Mon­day, in a further deepening of his rift with the defence establishment. Prigozhin said the incident came the day after he urgently requested ammunition supplies from the commander of what Russia calls its “Special Military Operation” (SMO). …

A former UK policeman jailed for life for murder was sentenced to an additional 19 months in prison on Monday for indecent exposure, raising questions about whether he could have been stopped sooner. Wayne Couzens, 50, is already serving a rare whole-life sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of London woman Sarah Everard after he snatched her off the …

ANKARA: Turkiye’s bickering opposition leaders ended months of fierce debate on Monday and agreed to name the head of the main secular party as their joint candidate against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in May 14 polls. A last-ditch deal aimed at averting a split of the opposition vote will see CHP chief Kemal Kilicdaroglu name the other five opposition leaders …

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter on Monday suffered a major outage with users worldwide reporting they could no longer read links to articles from outside websites. “Some parts of Twitter may not be working as expected right now,” the company’s tech support account said in a tweet, blaming the problem on “unintended consequences” from an update to the platform. The breakdown, which …

KABUL: Afghan universities reopened on Monday after a winter break, but only men returned to class with a “heartbreaking” ban by the Taliban authorities on women in higher education still in force. The university ban is one of several restrictions imposed on women since the Taliban stormed back to power in August 2021 and has sparked global outrage — inclu­ding …

TAIPEI: Taiwan Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng warned on Monday the island has to be on alert this year for a “sudden entry” by the Chinese military into areas close to its territory amid rising military tensions across the Taiwan Strait. China has stepped up its military activities around Taiwan in recent years, including almost daily air force incursions into the …

KYIV: Kyiv said on Sunday it was holding off attacks from Russian troops still attempting to surround Bakhmut, a now-destroyed eastern Ukrainian city that Moscow has been trying to capture for months. Ukraine has vowed to defend “fortress Bakhmut” but has faced Russian troops determined to take the city which has turned into a political prize as the battle drags …

DUBAI: Al Qaeda on Sunday confirmed the death of a senior figure in the network’s Yemen branch in a suspected US air strike last month, SITE Intelligence Group reported. Security and local government sources said on Wednesday Hamad bin Hamoud al Tamimi had been killed, identifying him as a top leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which …