International

SEOUL: North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles on Saturday, Seoul’s military said, adding a final salvo to Pyongyang’s record-breaking blitz of launches this year. Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen sharply in 2022 as the North has conducted sanctions-busting weapons tests nearly every month, including firing its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile ever. Saturday’s launch comes a …

An explosion outside the military airport in Kabul on Sunday caused multiple casualties, a spokesman for the Taliban-run interior ministry said. “Today morning an explosion took place outside Kabul military airport, due to which a number of our citizens were martyred and injured,” spokesman Abdul Nafi Takor told Reuters, adding that investigations were underway. He did not specify the nature or …

China appointed US ambassador Qin Gang as its new foreign minister on Friday, state media reported, installing a top diplomat known for tough talk against the West. The 56-year-old replaces Wang Yi, who has been the face of Chinese diplomacy since 2013. Qin had been Beijing’s top representative in Washington since last year, charged with putting the relationship between the …

TEHRAN: Iran held joint naval, air, and ground exercises in the Gulf on Friday near the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway. The drills involve submarines and drones “practising information-gathering operations against attacking forces”, as well as reconnaissance operations, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told the official IRNA news agency. The exercises, code named Zolfaghar-1401, were launched on Friday in the eastern side of the …

BEIRUT: An attack in eastern Syria killed 12 oil field workers, a war monitor said on Friday, a day after Syrian Kurdish-led forces announced an offensive against militants. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which draws on extensive sources inside Syria, gave the toll of 12 dead in the assault near an oil field west of Deir Ezzor. It …

WASHINGTON: Democrats in Congress released six years of Donald Trump’s tax records to the public on Friday, disclosing documents the former president long sought to keep secret and dealing another setback as he again seeks the White House in 2024. A Democratic-controlled US House of Representatives committee released Trump’s redacted returns for 2015 through 2020, capping a multi-year battle between …

WASHINGTON: The highest bidder for a Pakistan embassy property in the US capital is Shahal Khan of Burkhan World Investments and he is also the likely winner of this bid, sources privy to the development told Dawn. Mr Khan is believed to have offered $6.8 million for the property. Burkhan World is based in Washington and claims to “invest in projects …

PARIS: Nearly 1,700 journalists have been killed worldwide over the past 20 years, an average of more than 80 a year, according to an analysis published by Reporters Without Borders. Pakistan was ranked fifth, as 93 journalists were killed since 2003 in different parts of the country. The two decades between 2003 and 2022 were “especially deadly decades for those in the …

Pioneering television journalist Barbara Walters, who upended a male-dominated industry as the first woman to anchor an evening news show in the United States, died on Friday at the age of 93, her long-time employer ABC said. Walters interviewed a host of US presidents, foreign leaders such as Anwar Sadat and Fidel Castro, and A-list celebrities in a hugely successful career that …

BEIJING: The Chinese government reacted with anger on Friday over Western moves to discourage travel from China, saying that all the Covid-19 data it shared, including with the World Health Organisation, was transparent. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier urged China to be “more forthcoming” on the pandemic and said it was “understandable” that some countries had introduced restrictions in …