International

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 …

POMPEII: A flock of grazing sheep is helping archaeologists to preserve the ancient ruins of Pompeii, the Roman city that was buried under metres of pumice and ash in the calamitous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Archaeologists have uncovered only around two-thirds of the 163-acre site at Pompeii since excavations began 250 years ago. Preserving the unexplored sections …

Several people have been killed in a shooting at a Jehovah’s Witness centre in Hamburg, with the gunman believed to be among the dead, German police said on Thursday. Police have not given a death toll, but multiple local media outlets reported that the shooting had left seven dead and eight seriously injured. The first emergency calls were made around …

A series of letters, which India’s current government has tried to keep classified, paint a weak picture of the Indian army’s position in its 1948 war with Pakistan, and that then-Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru was urged to agree to a ceasefire by his most senior general. According to a Guardian report, Mr Nehru was advised by Gen Sir Francis Robert Roy …

SURABAYA: An Indo­nesian court handed prison sentences to two football match officials on Thurs­day after finding them guilty of negligence over one of the world’s deadliest stadium stampedes. The October 2022 derby match in Malang, East Java, between Arema FC and Persebaya Surabaya ended in chaos with 135 spectators killed, many crushed as they fled for exits after police fired …

DHAKA: Forty global figures, including Ban Ki-moon, Hillary Clinton and Bono published a joint letter on Wednesday calling upon Bangladesh to stop “unfair” attacks and harassment of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus. Yunus 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 says he is “sucking …

KABUL: Afghanistan under the Taliban government is the “most repressive country in the world” for women’s rights, with authorities effectively trap­ping women and girls in their homes, the United Nations said on Wednesday. About 20 women held a rare demonstration in a Kabul street on Wednesday, calling on the international community to protect Afghans. The Taliban government has imposed a …

LONDON: Arif Naqvi, the founder of collapsed private equity firm Abraaj Group, on Wednesday lost his final challenge to an impending extradition to the United States, where he faces charges of fraud. US prosecutors allege that Mr Naqvi masterminded a plot to defraud investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as well as the US government-run agency Overseas Private …