International

Police in Assam have arrested more than 1,800 men for marrying or arranging marriages to underage girls, launching what the eastern Indian state’s chief minister said on Friday was the start of a sustained crackdown on the practice. Police began the arrests on Thursday night, and more were likely, including of people helping to register such marriages in temples and …

KARACHI: Former captain Misbah-ul-Haq has criticised the likely reappointment of Mickey Arthur as director of the national team by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). Arthur, who acted as Pakistan head coach from 2016 to 2019, is very likely to come back but in a different role. The South African is the front-runner for the position of team director. The PCB …

India proposed on Wednesday 5.94 trillion rupees ($72.6 billion) in defence spending for the 2023-24 financial year, 13 per cent up from the previous period’s initial estimates, aiming to add more fighter jets and roads along its tense border with China. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated 1.63tr rupees for defence capital outlays — an expenditure that would include new weapons, …

GENEVA: Eight humanoid robots will be the star attractions when the United Nations hosts its first summit since the start of the pandemic on the benefits of artificial intelligence, it said Wednesday. The AI for Good Global Summit, first held in 2017, will return to Geneva on July 6 and 7 after a three-year Covid-imposed break, the UN’s International Tele­co­mmunication …

VIENNA: The UN nuclear watchdog criticised Iran on Wednesday for making an undeclared change to the interconnection between the two clusters of advanced machines enriching uranium to up to 60 per cent purity, close to weapons grade, at its Fordow plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency said it found the change during an unannounced inspection on Jan 21 at the …

WASHINGTON: A search by US law enforcement of President Joe Biden’s Delaware beach house turned up no classified documents, the president’s lawyer said on Wednesday. “No documents with classified markings were found,” attorney Bob Bauer said in a statement after the latest search of the president’s belongings for improperly stored documents. Agents did however take “for further review some materials …

SYDNEY: A tiny but dangerously radioactive capsule that fell off a truck on a remote Australian outback highway has been found, relieved authorities said on Wednesday. The silver-coloured cylinder — smaller than a human fingernail — was recovered by the side of the road near the town of Newman, Western Australia, state emergency services said. The capsule disappeared from a …

BENGALURU: Indian billionaire Gautam Adani on Wednesday lost his position as the richest person of Asia, as shares of his listed companies slide further as a rout in his companies deepened to $86 billion, while his empire fights allegations of serious fraud made in a report by US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research. Wednesday’s stock losses saw Adani slipping to 15th on …

LONDON: Half a million workers went on strike in Britain on Wednesday, calling for higher wages in the largest such walkout in over a decade, closing schools and severely disrupting transport. As Europe battles a cost-of-living crisis, Britain’s umbrella labour organisation the Trades Union Congress (TUC) called it the “biggest day of strike action since 2011”. The latest strikes come …

KARACHI: While the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has rebranded itself as a country open to investment, tourism and engagement with the rest of the world under powerful Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, also known as MBS, the desert kingdom’s reputation as one of the largest executioners in the globe persists. Figures compiled in a fresh report by UK-based human rights NGO Reprieve, …