International

WASHINGTON: Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has blamed Ashraf Ghani, who served as Afghan president, for failing the US-led peace process and landing his people into trouble. Speaking at the University of Chicago earlier this week, Mr Pompeo explained how the US wanted its negotiations with the Taliban to be a years’ long process that would have led to a …

QUETTA: The Pak-Iran Joint Border Trade Com­mittee at a meeting agreed to remove hurdles, increase bilateral legal trade and implement the barter agreement for achieving the target of trade between the two countries. The Iranian delegation at the committee’s 10th meeting was led by Sistan-Balu­chestan’s Deputy Governor Dawood Shaharki while the Pakistani delegation was led by Customs Chief Collectors Abdul …

JENIN: Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, in what witnesses described as a running skirmish, touched off by an army raid near a flashpoint town. Witnesses said Israeli troops clashed with gunmen before dawn, wounding one. Two other gunmen drove away with him, and after unloading him with local residents, continued in the car, …

At least 64 people were killed on Sunday when a domestic flight crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, the small Himalayan country’s worst air crash in three decades. Hundreds of rescue workers were scouring the hillside where the Yeti Airlines flight, carrying 72 people from the capital Kathmandu, went down. Local TV showed rescue workers scrambling around broken sections of the …

The Foreign Office (FO) said on Friday that the official Twitter account of the Pakistan consulate in the Chinese city of Chengdu was “hacked”. “As of today, any tweet or message issued from this account is not made by the Pakistan consulate general Chengdu nor does it reflect the position of the government of Pakistan,” said Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz …

Severe storms lashed the southern United States on Thursday evening, unleashing dozens of damaging tornadoes and leaving at least seven people dead in their wake. The National Weather Service reported 45 possible tornadoes over the course of the day, though that number could be revised. Six people were killed due to the storms in Alabama’s central Autauga County, deputy director …

WASHINGTON: Since 2014 as many as 52,067 people have died or gone missing while trying to enter prosperous countries in search of a better life, according to a report released this week. Data released by the Missing Migrants Project of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) shows that the majority died while trying to cross the seas to Europe. The …

PARIS: The world’s political and business elite will gather for the annual Davos summit next week to promote “cooperation in a fragmented world”, with war in Ukraine, the climate crisis and global trade tensions high on the agenda. For half a century, the World Economic Forum in the Swiss Alps has brought together executives and policymakers to sing the praise …

KRAMATORSK: Russia said on Friday its forces had wrested control of the war-scarred town of Soledar in east Ukraine, its first claim of victory in months of battlefield setbacks, but Ukraine said there was no takeover. Both sides have conceded heavy losses in the battle for the salt mining outpost, with Moscow desperate to sell any win back home after …

SELMA: Rescue teams were searching for missing people in central Alabama on Friday after thunderstorms and tornadoes claimed eight lives, damaged dozens of homes and knocked down trees. Seven of the eight deaths were from the south-eastern US state’s Autauga county. Buster Barber, the county’s coroner, said the number of casualties would rise. The tornado caused widespread damage, ripping off …