International

MOSCOW: Russia pushed ahead on Friday with a civilian pullout from Ukraine’s Kherson region amid a mounting counter-offensive, with President Vladimir Putin saying residents must be “removed” from danger zones. The Russian army said “more than 5,000 civilians” were being led across the Dnipro River every day, showing footage of soldiers directing lines of cars onto flotillas crossing over to …

WASHINGTON: “Enough is enough, this has to stop,” said Waheeda Mani, a PhD in environmental sciences from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Cha­m­­paign. She was one of around 50 people gathered at a market near Washington, known as ‘mini-Pakistan’, on Thursday night to protest against the assassination attempt on PTI chairman and former prime minister Imran Khan. Dr Mani said she was not …

NEW DELHI: A rightwing Hindu leader was shot dead in Amritsar on Friday and its impact was expected in faraway Gujarat, where state polls are scheduled to be held next month. Sudhir Suri, who headed an outfit called the Shiv Sena, had police protection but the attacker was successful in landing at least two shots that killed him. East Punjab …

NEW DELHI: Smog hit “hazardous” levels in New Delhi on Thursday as smoke from thousands of crop fires in northern India combined with other pollutants to create a noxious grey cocktail enveloping the megacity. Levels of the most dangerous particles — PM2.5, so tiny they can enter the bloodstream — were 588 per cubic metre early on Thursday morning, according …

PARIS: Iranians staged fresh protest actions on Thursday in defiance of a crackdown by the authorities as an 18-year-old became the latest teenager killed in clashes in the northwest. Iran has for over six weeks been gripped by protests sparked by the death on Sept 16 of Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the “morality police”. The leadership under Ayatollah …

WASHINGTON: The Chinese feel that the United States should not urge China and Pakistan to renegotiate Beijing’s debt and should not ‘bad mouth’ the Pakistan-China relationship, according to the director of the China programme at the Stimson Centre. Speaking at a two-day seminar on US-Pakistan relations, Chinese foreign policy expert Yun Sun said Pakistan’s relationship with the US was a …

SEOUL: North Korea fired at least 23 missiles into the sea on Wednesday, including one that landed less than 60km (40 miles) off South Korea’s coast, which the South’s President Yoon Suk-yeol described as “territorial encroachment”. It was the first time a ballistic missile had landed near the South’s waters since the peninsula was divided in 1945, and the most …

ANKARA: Turkish Pre­sident Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday his ruling AK Party (AKP) could put a constitutional amendment protecting women’s right to wear headscarves to a referendum if it was not passed by parliament. The AKP was set to present the reform to parliament as soon as parties step up efforts to appeal to voters ahead of presidential and parliamentary …

JAKARTA: Indonesian police firing tear gas was the main trigger for a deadly football stampede at a stadium in East Java last month, the country’s human rights commission found in a report on the incident released on Wednesday. Officials from the human rights commission (Komnas HAM) said 135 people had died, mostly from asphyxiation, in the stampede after the match at Kanjuruhan …

SAN FRANCISCO: The man accused of attacking the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer told police he also planned to target several other politicians as part of a “suicide mission”, according to court documents filed on Tuesday. David DePape, 42, was arrested last week after he allegedly broke into the couple’s mansion intending to tie up …