International

SHARM EL-SHEIKH: The UN’s COP27 climate summit kicked off on Sunday in Egypt with warnings against backsliding on efforts to cut emissions and calls for rich nations to compensate poor countries after a year of extreme weather disasters. Just in the past few months, climate-induced catastrophes have killed thousands, displaced millions and cost billions in damages across the world. Massive …

AMSTERDAM: More than 100 environmental activists wearing white suits stormed into an area where private jets are kept at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport on Saturday and stopped several aircraft from departing by sitting in front of their wheels. The protest was part of a day of demonstrations in and around the airport organised by environmental groups Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion to …

SHARM EL SHEIKH: Leaders buffeted by the geopolitical crosswinds or war and economic turmoil meet in Egypt on Monday at a climate summit tasked with taming the terrifying juggernaut of global warming. Expectations are running high in a world justifiably anxious about its climate-addled future as deadly floods, heat waves and storms across the planet track with worst-case climate scenarios. …

WASHINGTON: Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has pledged the platform will not devolve into a “free-for-all hellscape,” but experts warn that mass layoffs may deeply impair the social network’s ability to curb misinformation. Twitter fired roughly half of its 7,500-strong workforce, only days before next week’s midterm elections in the United States, when a spike in fake content is expected …

ISLAMABAD: The World Bank will release a Pakistan-centric climate report during the United Nat­ions Climate Conference (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, to help prioritise impactful actions needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost adaptation. According to a statement by the World Bank, ‘Climate and Development Report’ will be launched on November 10. Pakistan ranks among the ten countries most affected …

SEOUL: North Korea fired four ballistic missiles on Saturday, the South Korean military said, the latest in Pyongyang’s testing blitz this week as Washington and Seoul concluded their biggest-ever air force drills. The flurry of North Korean launches included an intercontinental ballistic missile and one that landed near the South’s territorial waters. South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said it was …

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden has now irked Afghans by repeatedly disparaging their country as a “Godforsaken place,” causing Kabul’s Taliban rulers to claim that the American leader was doing so out of frustration. Last month, President Biden annoyed Pakistanis when he described their country as “one of the most dangerous nations in the world” that possessed nuclear weapons without any ‘cohesion’. …

A domestic passenger plane plunged into Lake Victoria in Tanzania early on Sunday due to bad weather shortly before landing in the northwestern city of Bukoba, police said, adding that rescue efforts were under way. “There was an accident involving a Precision Air plane which … crashed into water about 100 metres from the airport,” regional police commander William Mwampaghale …

Oleh, the commander of a Ukrainian mechanised infantry unit dug into trenches west of Kherson, is confident his Russian foes will be forced to abandon the strategic port by winter weather, logistical logjams and the threat of encirclement. But neither he nor his men think the Russians will go quickly or quietly and nor do they intend to let them. …

AN India-based computer hacking gang targeted Pakistani politicians, military officials and diplomats to eavesdrop on private conversations at the behest of Indian secret services, claimed an expose by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Sunday Times. The revelations based on the leaked documents and undercover work in India by the reporters of the said organisations revealed that private British investigators, through the hacking gang …