International

SYDNEY: An urgent search was underway in Western Australia on Saturday after a tiny radioactive capsule was reported to have gone missing while being transported from a mine. The 8mm by 6mm silver capsule, which is used in mining operations, has been unaccounted for since mid-January, emergency services said. It contains the radioactive substance Caesium-137, according to Western Australia’s health …

WASHINGTON: The man who carried out a pepper-spray attack on a US Capitol Police officer who died the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot was sentenced to 80 months in prison on Friday with credit for time already served in pretrial detention. Julian Khater, 32, who admitted in a guilty plea he had used the pepper spray against Officer …

BAKHMUT: Ukrainian troops were locked in a “fierce” confrontation with Russian fighters on Friday for control of the town of Vugledar, south-west of Donetsk, as the two sides battle along the southern front. Both sides claimed success in the small administrative centre of apartment blocks surrounded by flat fields, a short distance from the strategic prize of the village of …

WASHINGTON: The House Foreign Affairs Committee plans to hold a vote next month on a bill aimed at blocking the use of China’s popular social media app TikTok in the United States, the committee confirmed on Friday. The measure, planned by the panel’s chair Represen­tative Michael McCaul, a Republican, would aim to give the White House the legal tools to …

KABUL: The Taliban-run Ministry of Higher Education ordered private universities in Afghanistan not to allow female students to sit university entrance exams next month, underscoring its policy to restrict women from tertiary education. A letter from the ministry was addressed to institutions in Afghanistan’s northern provinces, including Kabul, where exams are due to take place from the end of February. …

KABUL: One hundred and sixty-six people have died in a wave of bitterly cold weather sweeping Afghanistan, an official said on Saturday, as extreme conditions heaped misery on the poverty-stricken nation. Afghanistan has been frozen by temperatures as low as -33 degrees Celsius since Jan 10, combined with widespread snowfall, icy gales and regular electricity outages. Aid agencies had warned …

WASHINGTON: A four-star US Air Force general has warned of a conflict with China as early as 2025 — most likely over Taiwan — and urged his commanders to push their units to achieve maximum operational battle readiness this year. In an internal memorandum that first emerged on social media on Friday, and was later confirmed as genuine by the …

UNITED NATIONS: The internet has “super-charged” hate speech, allowing perpetrators to spread their “lies, conspiracies and threats,” the United Nations warned, hours after an anti-Islam activist burned copies of the Muslim holy book near a Copenhagen mosque facing the Turkish embassy in Denmark. “Around the world, we see a groundswell of xenophobia, racism and intolerance, violent misogyny, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim …

UNITED NATIONS: Women continue to comprise the largest share of trafficking victims in South Asia, a new UN report has said. In 2020, however, more men were detected as victims of trafficking in the region compared to previous years, said the report prepared by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The ‘Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2022’ also showed …

WASHINGTON/KYIV: There is no factual basis to allegations China provides aid to Russia, China’s embassy in Washington said late on Thursday, after the United States put sanctions on a China-based company for alleged support to Russian mercenary company Wagner Group. The US Treasury Department on Thursday designated China-based Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute Co. LTD, known as …