International

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has informed a UN environment meeting that it plans to establish zero plastic waste cities along the Indus River to combat the pervasive issue of plastic pollution. Revealing details of the plan to the world body, Pakistan’s UN envoy Munir Akram stated that it forms a crucial component of the broader ‘Living Indus Initiative,’ which seeks to …

By: Raja Zahid A Khanzada Houston, Texas: A mammoth gathering on Sunday, March 17, 2024, at the Bayou City Center in Houston of over 2,000 persons made it again the largest Iftar Dinner event in the United States of America. Silver Jubilee of America’s largest Annual Houston Iftar Dinner was organized for the past many years by the Muslim Sister …

PARIS: Households around the world threw away one billion meals every single day in 2022 in what the United Nations on Wednesday called a “global tragedy” of food waste. More than $1 trillion worth of food was binned by households and businesses at a time when nearly 800 million people were going hungry, the UN’s latest Food Waste Index Report …

GENEVA: A UN expert who determined that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza on Wednesday said that she had faced threats over her work but insisted it only made her more determined to push ahead. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said this week there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel was …

PARIS: Struggle to wrap your head around daylight savings? Spare a thought for the world’s timekeepers, who are trying to work out how climate change is affecting Earth’s rotation — and in turn, how we keep track of time. In a strange twist, global warming could even help out timekeepers by delaying the need for history’s first “negative leap second” …

WASHINGTON: Astronomers on Wednesday announced that they have detected a strong and organised magnetic field twisted in a spiral pattern around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, revealing previously unknown qualities of the immensely powerful object lurking at the center of our galaxy. The structure of the magnetic field emanating from the edge of the black hole called Sagittarius A*, …

BALTIMORE: Rescuers have lost hope of finding more survivors of the Baltimore bridge collapse, the US coast guard said as efforts switched on Wednesday to looking for bodies of the missing and more answers to why a container ship smashed into the bridge. US federal safety investigators have also recovered the black box from the freight ship that crashed into the bridge, …

LONDON: A UK government minister is on a collision course with the law over his refusal to reveal the sources of allegations that British special forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan. Johnny Mercer, Britain’s minister for veterans, has said “multiple officers” told him about alleged murders and a subsequent cover-up during the Afghan conflict. He has refused to divulge their identities to …

GAZA STRIP: Israel bombed at least four homes in Rafah on Wednesday, raising fresh fears among the more than a million Palestinians sheltering in the last refuge on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip that a long-threatened ground assault could be coming. One of the airstrikes killed 11 people from a single family, health officials said. The health ministry …

MUMBAI: India on Wednesday summoned a top US diplomat over Washington’s remarks on the arrest of key opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal just weeks before the parliamentary elections. The US State Depart­ment had urged India to ensure a “fair, transparent, and timely legal process” for Kejriwal, who was arrested last week. India strongly objected to the remarks two days …