International

Israel and Palestinian fighters have agreed to a truce in Gaza from Sunday evening as mediated by Cairo, sources said, after a weekend-long pounding of Palestinian targets by Israel triggered longer-range rocket attacks against its cities. An Egyptian security source said Israel had agreed to the proposal, while a Palestinian official familiar with Egyptian efforts said the ceasefire would go …

ISLAMABAD: The Fore­ign Office on Sunday categorically rejected the ludicrous comments and fallacious claims made by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding a statement of the Organi­sation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In a statement distributed in the UN headquarters on Friday, the OIC reiterated its earlier calls for implementing UNSC resolutions on Jammu and Kashmir, which recognise the …

AN INDIAN woman who was missing for 20 years has been found in Pakistan with the help of a video on social media. Hamida Banu left India in 2002 after a recruitment agent promised to get her the job of a cook in Dubai. Instead, she says, she was tricked and trafficked to Pakistan. Banu’s family in India’s Mumbai told BBC …

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 …