International

BAGHDAD: Iraqi activists protested on Sunday to demand a law against domestic violence, days after a YouTuber was strangled by her father in a killing that sparked outrage in the conservative country. Tiba al-Ali, 22, was killed by her father on January 31 in the southern province of Diwaniyah, interior ministry spokesman Saad Maan had said on Twitter on Friday. …

LONDON: Former British prime minister Liz Truss blamed on Sunday the economic “orthodoxy” in the country’s finance ministry, other nations and in parts of the governing Conservative Party for derailing her premiership and “plan for growth”. Truss’s tenure was cut short last year after her largely unfunded mini budget and tax cuts pushed up borrowing costs and mortgage rates, sent the pound …

JUBA: Pope Francis appealed on Sunday to the people of South Sudan to lay down their “weapons of hatred” at an open-air mass on the final day of his pilgrimage to a country blighted by violence and poverty. Large crowds of ecstatic worshippers streamed into the John Garang Mausoleum in the capital Juba to see the 86-year-old pontiff, who has …

KABUL: An envoy for Qatar’s foreign affairs minister visited the Afghan capital on Sunday and met the Taliban administration’s acting foreign minister, according to an Afghan foreign ministry statement. The visit comes after the Taliban administration placed restrictions on women’s education and NGO work, which Qatar labelled “deeply concerning” amid widespread international criticism. Mutlaq Bin Majed Al-Qahtani, the special envoy of Qatar’s …

BAKHMUT: Heavy fighting was underway on Sunday in the northern parts of the frontline hotspot Bakhmut, while Russian missile strikes on Ukraine’s second-largest city Kharkiv wounded five people. Despite the flow of Western weapons to Ukraine, Russia has in recent days claimed gains around war-ravaged Bakhmut in the eastern region of Donetsk. However, the head of Russia’s mercenary group Wagner …

A major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck central Turkiye and northwest Syria on Monday, killing more than 500 people and injuring hundreds as buildings collapsed across the region, triggering searches for survivors in the rubble. The quake, which hit in the early darkness of a winter morning, was also felt in Cyprus and Lebanon.     “We were shaken like …

Beijing confirmed on Monday a balloon spotted flying over Latin America is Chinese, while the United States worked to recover what it claimed was an unmanned spy craft it shot down at the weekend. China has expressed fury at Washington’s decision to shoot down a device that it insists was an unmanned weather surveillance aircraft that had veered off course last week. …

SWABI: The police claim to have arrested four militants, including a prayer leader, belonging to the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during a raid on a house in Hund village here on Friday night, regional police officer (RPO) Mohammad Ali Gandapur said on Saturday. Addressing a press conference, RPO Gandapur accompanied by district police officer Najamul Hussain said the police had …

Pakistan is observing Kash­mir Solidarity Day on Sunday to express wholehearted support of the nation to the relentless struggle of Kashmiri people for their inalienable right to self-determination under United Nations resolutions. In a message on the occasion, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said: “Today the whole of Pakistan comes together to express its unflinching solidarity and support to Kashmiri brothers …

LONDON: The bodies of two Britons killed while trying to help people evacuate from fierce fighting in Ukraine have been recovered in a prisoner swap, Kyiv officials said on Saturday. Chris Parry, 28, and Andrew Bagshaw, 47, were undertaking voluntary work in Soledar, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, when their vehicle was reportedly hit by a shell. The two …