International

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday spoke to the leadership of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, and called for enhancing political and economic ties with both states. According to the Prime Minister Office (PMO), the prime minister telephoned Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE, and conveyed warm greetings to him on the occasion …

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met on Saturday for the first in-person talks since October after attending a G20 summit where the top US diplomat led efforts to pressure Russia over its war in Ukraine. US officials say Blinken’s meeting with Wang in Bali, Indonesia, including a morning session of talks and a …

Pilgrims cast pebbles in the stoning of the devil ritual on Saturday, as this year’s expanded Haj pilgrimage was winding down. From first light, small groups of worshippers made their way across the valley of Mina, near Makkah, to throw stones at three concrete walls representing Satan. In 2019, some 2.5 million pilgrims from around the world took part in …

Thousands of protesters in Sri Lanka’s commercial capital Colombo broke through police barricades and stormed the president’s official residence on Saturday in one of the largest anti-government marches in the crisis-hit country this year. Some protesters, holding Sri Lankan flags and helmets, broke into the president’s residence, video footage from local TV news NewsFirst channel showed. Two defence ministry sources said President …

A motorcade carrying the body of former prime minister Shinzo Abe arrived at his home in the Japanese capital on Saturday, a day after he was assassinated by a lone gunman in a rare act of political violence that has shocked the country. Mourners gathered at his residence and at the scene of Friday’s attack in the western city of Nara, where …

WASHINGTON: Paleontologists said on Thursday they had discovered a new giant carnivorous dinosaur species that had a massive head and tiny arms, just like Tyrannosaurus rex. The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Current Biology, suggest that small forelimbs were no evolutionary accident, but rather gave apex predators of the time certain survival advantages. Meraxes gigas — named after a …

COLOMBO: For the last two weeks, Sri Lankan doctor Thusitha Kahaduwa has left his car in the garage and done his patient rounds by bicycle, spending hours each day criss-crossing the commercial capital Colombo. The 41-year-old is among countless thousands, many of them middle-class professionals, who have switched to two wheels for everything from work commutes to grocery shopping after …

LONDON: The heads of MI5 and the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned on Wednesday about China’s commercial espionage thrust in the West, in a rare joint address at the British intelligence service’s London headquarters. Speaking to an audience of officials and business executives in Thames House, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and FBI Director Chris Wray said the threat from …

MAKKAH: With her husband back at home in Tunisia and draped in a national flag, Laila al-Qarni urges all Muslim women to perform Haj without a male guardian, after the requirement was shelved last year. The Saudi authorities’ move has brought a whole new dimension to the annual pilgrimage. “Why do women have to be accompanied by a male anyway? …

DUBAI: The Taliban and the United Arab Emirates are poised to strike a deal for the Gulf nation to run Kabul airport and several others in Afghanistan that could be announced within weeks, according to sources familiar with the negotiations. The Taliban, whose government remains an international pariah without formal recognition, have courted regional powers, including Qatar and Turkey, to …