International

UNITED NATIONS: Foreign Mini­ster Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari urged the global community on Friday not to underestimate the resentment and sense of injustice Muslims felt when faced with deliberate acts of Islam­ophobia, like the burning of holy books. The foreign minister was speaking at a special high-level event at the UN headquarters in New York to highlight the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, …

A blast hit the capital of Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province on Saturday, police said, killing one person and wounding five a few days after the death of the province’s governor in an explosion claimed by the militant group Islamic State. “A blast has taken place in the second police district of Balkh,” said Mohamad Asif Waziri, Balkh’s police spokesperson. He confirmed the …

LOS ANGELES: California’s banking regulators on Friday closed SVB Financial Group, the largest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, moving quickly to protect depositors as a crisis at the startup-focused lender rippled through global markets and hit banking stocks. The regulator appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as the receiver, putting the tech-heavy lender into receivership and will …

TEHRAN: Regional powerhouses Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to restore ties and reopen diplomatic missions in a surprise, Chinese-brokered announcement that could have wide-ranging implications across the Middle East. In a trilateral statement, Tehran and Riyadh said they would reopen embassies and missions within two months and implement security and economic cooperation deals signed more than 20 years …

Li Qiang, the former Communist Party chief of Shanghai, took office on Saturday as China’s premier, the country’s No.2 post, putting the close ally of President Xi Jinping in charge of reviving an economy battered by three years of Covid-19 curbs. Widely perceived to be pragmatic and business-friendly, the 63-year-old Li faces the daunting task of shoring up China’s uneven …

Xi Jinping was handed a third term as Chinese president on Friday, capping a rise that has seen him become the country’s most powerful leader in generations. The appointment by China’s rubber-stamp parliament comes after Xi locked in another five years as head of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October. Since then, the 69-year-old Xi has weathered widespread protests over his zero-Covid policy …

WARSAW: John Paul II “knew” about cases of child abuse by Catholic priests in Poland and helped cover them up before becoming pope in 1978, a new book claims. Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek spent more than a decade combing through archives and interviewing victims and witnesses for “Maxima Culpa”, which has sparked an outcry in the pope’s native Poland. “I …

North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile on Thursday, Seoul’s military said, Pyongyang’s latest show of force just days before South Korea and the United States kick off major joint military exercises. Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their worst points in decades, with the nuclear-armed North conducting ever more provocative banned weapons tests as Seoul moved …

TUNIS: Fourteen people from sub-Saharan Africa drowned in the Mediterranean, authorities said on Thursday in Tunisia, where black migrants have faced a wave of violence since an inflammatory speech by President Kais Saied. The drama occurred off the coast of Tunisia’s Sfax region, where a spokesman for the court in charge of the investigation said the dead were from two …

An ex-US Marine has described the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as a “catastrophe”, telling the lawmakers “there was inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence’’, BBC News reported. Tyler Vargas-Andrews, who was critically injured at the Kabul airport blast on Aug 27, told the Republican-led hearing on the evacuation from Afghanistan that he was thrown four feet onto the ground but …