International

ISLAMABAD: The German foreign minister’s rare backing of Pakistan’s position on the Kashmir dispute has deeply upset Delhi because the two happenings may be more than a coincidence. Many in Pakistan have been quick to present these developments as a sort of diplomatic coup, but one must not miss the context in which the statement was made and the tour took place. …

KASARAGOD: Hundreds of people attended the tearful funeral on Monday of a crocodile believed to have been divine and survived for decades on a vegetarian diet at a Hindu temple in India. Babia guarded the much-revered Sri Ananthapadmanabha Swamy temple in the southern state of Kerala, lurking in the surrounding lake for nearly 80 years, the temple’s secretary Ramachandran Bhat …

KYIV: President Vladimir Putin threatened on Monday more “severe” attacks against Ukraine after Russian missiles rained down on the capital Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities in what Washington branded “utter brutality”. The biggest wave of strikes across Ukraine in months killed at least 11 and wounded more than 80 in retaliation for an explosion this weekend that damaged a key …

DUBAI: Iranian security forces intensified a crackdown on anti-government protests in several Kurdish cities on Monday, social media posts and videos showed, pressing efforts to quell unrest ignited by the death of a woman in morality police custody. Protests have swept Iran since Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old from Iran’s Kurdish region, died on Sept 16 while being held for “inappropriate …

WASHINGTON: The United States has asked its citizens not to travel to Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, due to the risk of “terrorism and civil unrest”. In a new travel advisory issued this week, the US State Department also urged citizens to exercise “increased caution” while travelling to other places in India due to “crime and terrorism”. The State Department, …

Sri Lanka’s cabinet has approved a proposal to downgrade the island nation’s economic status to “low income country”, in order to get access to concessional funding from international organisations, the cabinet spokesman said on Tuesday. Sri Lanka’s economy is in a deep slump, shrinking at an annual 8.4 per cent in the June quarter in one of the steepest quarterly …

A three-year-old child who managed to survive last week’s massacre at a nursery in northeast Thailand slumbered through the horror under a blanket in the corner of a classroom. Paveenut Supolwong, nicknamed “Ammy”, is normally a light sleeper, but at naptime on Thursday when the killer burst into the nursery and began murdering 22 children, Ammy was fast asleep with …

Hurricane Julia raked across Nicaragua Sunday, lashing the country with winds and heavy rain and bringing potentially life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides to much of Central America. Maximum sustained winds were estimated at 85 miles per hour (140 kph) when the storm made landfall near the Laguna de Perlas area at 0715 GMT, the country’s weather agency said. By late …

Fake heiress Anna Sorokin, whose breathtaking deception of New York’s financial elite inspired a hit Netflix series, was released Friday from an immigration detention center but still faces deportation from the United States. Sorokin, who used the name Anna Delvey while scamming more than a quarter of a million dollars from hotels, banks and friends, was granted conditional release by …

Germany’s Social Democrats on Sunday won a closely-fought regional election that was dominated by worries over soaring energy costs, giving Chancellor Olaf Scholz a welcome boost as a difficult winter looms. Scholz’s centre-left SPD was set to remain the largest force in the coastal state of Lower Saxony, taking around 32.7-33.3 percent of the vote, according to exit polls by …