International

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD: As aid and assistance from foreign countries continued to pour into Pakistan in the wake of flood devastation, Google on Monday launched an international appeal to collect relief funds. The most used search engine in the world launched the appeal, asking its billions of users across the globe to donate $15, $25 and $50 each. The appeal included a …

BOSTON: President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Monday boosting the US biotech sector as part of his Cancer Moonshot initiative, which invokes the national effort to land a man on the Moon 60 years ago. The president was in Boston for an address deliberately set to echo John F. Kennedy’s famous 1962 “Moonshot speech” in which he called …

KABUL: The United Nations mission in Afghanistan has accused the Taliban authorities of intimidating and harassing its female staff working in the country, including detaining three women for questioning on Monday. Since the Taliban seized power in August last year, they have imposed harsh restrictions on girls and women to comply with their austere vision of Islam — effectively squeezing …

WASHINGTON: Former President Donald Trump’s attorneys on Monday said they oppose the US Justice Department’s request to continue to review classified documents seized by the FBI from his Florida estate last month in an ongoing criminal investigation. In a court filing, his lawyers also asked US District Judge Aileen Cannon to require an independent arbiter, called a special master, to …

KRAMATORSK: Ukrainian forces said on Monday their lightning counter-offensive took back yet more ground in the past 24 hours, as Russia responded with strikes on some of the recaptured areas. The territorial shifts marked one of Russia’s biggest reversals since its troops were turned back from Kyiv in the earliest days of the nearly seven months of fighting, yet Moscow …

Officials in China’s Sichuan province, which was hit by an earthquake that killed 93 last week, lowered the emergency response level as most transportation, electricity and communication services resumed, state media reported on Tuesday. The strongest earthquake to hit the province in five years killed 55 in an area known as Ganzi and 38 in the city of Ya’an, CCTV news said. Rescue efforts …

A fire that started at an electric scooter showroom in India killed at least eight people and injured 11, police said on Tuesday, in what is the deadliest such incident involving electric vehicles in the country. A spate of electric scooter fires this year has alarmed the government, which is keen to promote use of such two-wheelers in its fight …

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will be travelling to Samarkand, Uzbekistan later this week to attend the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) Council of Heads of State (CHS), where climate change will be on the agenda. Unprecedented rains and flashfloods have affected around 33 million people across Pakistan, caused economic losses estimated at $30 billion and resulted in …

Armenia appealed to world leaders for help on Tuesday, saying that Azerbaijani forces were trying to advance onto its territory amid violence along the arch foes’ shared border. Fighting erupted overnight along the volatile border between the Caucasus neighbours, leaving troops dead on both sides, defence ministries in Baku and Yerevan said, without giving the number of casualties. The escalation …

LONDON: In his first foreign trip in more than two years since the start of Covid-19, Chinese President Xi Jinping will reach Kazakhstan on Wednesday and meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s summit in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, according to Kazakhstan and the Kremlin. While Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri …