International

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazilian police said they arrested a German diplomat on Saturday for allegedly killing husband at their home in an upscale Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood, then attempting to cover up the crime. Uwe Herbert Hahn, a German consul, told authorities Belgian national Walter Henri Maximilien Biot, had taken ill, collapsing and fatally hitting his head, police said. However, …

REHOBOTH BEACH: US President Joe Biden tested negative for Covid-19 for a second consecutive day on Sunday and ended his isolation at the White House with a trip to his vacation home in Delaware and a reunion with his wife, first lady Jill Biden. Biden has been holed up at the White House for more than two weeks with Covid, …

BEIRUT: More than 30 people fled a Lebanon detention centre at dawn on Sunday, security forces said, after sawing their way through a window, according to a judicial official. “At dawn… 31 detainees managed to escape” from a detention centre in the Adl­ieh district of the capital Beirut, the Internal Security Forces said in a statement. “Immediate orders were giv­en …

China carried out fresh military drills around Taiwan on Monday, Beijing said, defying calls for it to end its largest-ever exercises encircling the democratic island in the wake of a visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Beijing has raged at the trip by Pelosi — the highest-ranking elected US official to visit Taiwan in decades — ripping up a series of …

KABUL: A bomb blast in a busy shopping street in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Saturday killed at least eight people and injured 22, hospital officials and witnesses said. Islamic State, a militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack, the group said on its Telegram channel. A senior medical officer at a private hospital said at least eight people died and …

TAIPEI: The deputy head of Taiwan defence ministry’s research and development unit was found dead on Saturday morning in a hotel room, according to the official Central News Agency. Ou Yang Li-hsing, deputy head of the military-owned National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology, was found dead in a hotel room in southern Taiwan on Saturday morning, CNA reported. It said authorities were …

COLOMBO: Sri Lanka has asked China to indefinitely delay a visit by a ship reported by Indian media to be a spy vessel, following intense pressure by the island’s northern neighbour, official sources said on Saturday. The Yuan Wang 5 is en route from the Chinese port of Jiangyin and due in the Chinese-run Sri Lankan port of Hambantota on …

LONDON: A London hospital on Saturday withdrew life support for 12-year-old British boy Archie Battersbee after his parents lost a long, emotive and divisive legal battle. Archie’s mother, Hollie Dance, said her son passed away just over two hours after the artificial ventilation was stopped. “Such a beautiful little boy. He fought right until the very end,” she told reporters, …

LOS ANGELES: Major flooding in California’s Death Valley on Friday stranded approximately 1,000 people, buried cars and shut down all roads into and out of the famously parched national park. No injuries were reported, according to the National Park Service, but around 60 cars were bogged down under several feet of debris. “Unprecedented amounts of rainfall caused substantial flooding,” the …

**PHNOM PENH: Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari on Saturday said that Pakistan has a keen desire to enhance its engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) — an intergovernmental organization comprising ten Southeast Asian countries. In his meeting with Cambodian For­e­i­­­gn Minister Prak Sokhonn on the sidelines of the 29th Ministerial Meeting of Asean Regional Forum (ARF), Mr Bhutto-Zardari …