International

CAIRO: Egypt and Turkiye took another step towards mending relations on Saturday when Ankara’s top diplomat visited Cairo for the first time since ties were ruptured a decade ago and held talks with his Egyptian counterpart. Relations were severely strained in 2013 after Egypt’s then-army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi, an ally …

Egypt hosts Israeli and Palestinian officials on Sunday in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh in a US and Jordanian-backed effort to calm a surge of violence in the West Bank ahead of the holy month of Ramazan. The five-way meeting follows a Feb 26 US-brokered summit in Jordan, the first of its kind in years, that secured Israeli and Palestinian …

TEL AVIV: Israelis gathered in towns and cities nationwide on Saturday for an 11th straight week of protests against the judicial reform plans of the hard-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The protesters fear that the proposed reforms, which are already moving through parliament and would increase the power of politicians over the courts, are a threat to Israeli …

DUBAI: An Iranian court has handed out death sentences to two men over an attack on a shrine in Iran that killed 15 people in October and was claimed by the militant Islamic State group, the official news agency IRNA reported on Saturday. Fars Province judiciary head Kazem Mousavi said the two men had been found guilty of charges including “spreading corruption …

KABUL: The UN World Food Programme has been forced to cut rations to four million Afghans this month, it said in a statement late on Friday, due to a funding shortfall in the midst of the country’s severe humanitarian crisis. “Due to funding constraints, at least four million people will receive just half of what they need to get by …

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile toward the sea off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Sunday, according to South Korea and Japan, the latest in a barrage of weapons tests from the nuclear-armed state. The missile, launched from the Dongchang-ri site on the west coast around 11:05am (0205 GMT), flew some 800km (500 miles) before hitting …

PARIS: France on Saturday banned protests opposite parliament after a second night of unrest sparked by President Emmanuel Macron’s move to impose an unpopular pension overhaul without a parliament vote. Macron’s government has invoked a controversial executive power to force through the bill by decree, causing an outrage among the political class as well as angry protests in streets. Opposition …

ANKARA: Just hours before it was due to expire, Turkiye on Saturday announced the extension of a deal that it brokered between Russia and Ukraine to facilitate exports of grain amid contradictory statements from Moscow and Kyiv about the duration of the extension ranging from 60 to 120 days. Turkiye and the United Nations did not specify the duration. “Following …

ANKARA: President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkiye’s parliament will begin ratifying Finland’s Nato bid, but not that of Sweden, removing the biggest remaining hurdle to enlarging the Western defence alliance as war continues to rage in Ukraine. Speaking in Ankara alongside Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto, Erdogan said Helsinki won Turkiye’s blessing after taking concrete steps to keep its …

ISLAMABAD: The Foreign Office on Friday claimed Pakis­tan had played a role in facilitating the dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Iran. “It is obvious that this [Saudi-Iran] agreement is a result of the mediation efforts of China and the constructive talks that took it facilitated and the two sides were able to resolve their differences,” Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told …