International

MITROVICA: European Union police officers are undertaking patrols in northern Kosovo after some 600 police officers from the Serb minority quit over a car licence plate row that the West fears may trigger fresh ethnic violence. Police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other state workers quit their jobs earlier this month after the government in Pristina ruled that local Serbs must …

KHERSON: Tears, smiles and the occasional artillery explosion on Saturday greeted passengers as the first train in eight months pulled into the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson from Kyiv and families divided by war were reunited. “I promised I would come back. It happened so I kept my promise,” said Anastasia Shevlyuga, 30, mom­ents after stepping off the train and …

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has urged the international community to help revive the Afghan economy and immediately provide $4.2 billion to the war-torn country for meeting its humanitarian needs. “We need to revive the Afghan economy — its banking system — and for that purpose the Afghan assets which are held abroad need to be injected back into the Afghan financial …

KYIV: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday used his first visit to Kyiv to pledge support to Ukraine, offering a major new air defence package as the country celebrated retaking the southern city of Kherson. “I am here today to say that the UK will continue to stand with you until Ukraine has won the peace and security it …

Pakistan on Sunday welcomed the announcement that countries adopted a hard-fought final agreement at the COP27 climate summit that sets up a fund to help poor countries being battered by climate disasters. After tense negotiations that ran through the night, the Egyptian COP27 presidency released the final text for a deal and simultaneously called a plenary session to quickly gavel …

The Fifa World Cup kicks off in Qatar on Sunday in a high-stakes event for the tiny nation which has faced a barrage of criticism and staked its reputation on delivering a smooth tournament, the first held in the Middle East and the most expensive in history. In a show of Gulf solidarity, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was …

Donald Trump’s Twitter account was reinstated on Saturday after the platform’s new owner Elon Musk ran a poll in which a narrow majority of voters supported the move. The poll results come days after the former US president announced another White House bid. Trump was banned from the platform early last year for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a …

Turkey announced early on Sunday that it had carried out air strikes against outlawed Kurdish militant bases across northern Syria and Iraq, which it said were being used to launch “terrorist” attacks on its soil. The offensive codenamed Operation Claw-Sword comes after a deadly blast in central Istanbul last Sunday which killed six people and wounded 81, with Turkey blaming a banned …

DUBAI: Kuwait on Wednesday put to death seven prisoners in a rare mass execution in the country. The state-run KUNA news agency described those executed as all facing premeditated murder and other charges in the country. It identified those killed as three Kuwaiti men, one Kuwaiti woman, a Syrian man, a Pakistani man and an Ethiopian woman. Kuwait said the …

OSLO: At Oslo’s Viking Ship museum, a team of engineers has begun work to ensure a new home being built nextdoor does not prove fatal for three vessels that have survived for a millennium or more. The new building is necessary to protect the wooden ships, two of which date from the ninth century and the third from the tenth …