International

JENIN: Israeli forces killed two Palestinians on Thursday in raids in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, during what the Israeli army described as “counterterrorism activities”. Hours later, the ministry announced the death of 45-year-old Palestinian father of six, who had been “critically wounded by Israeli bullets” on Wednesday in Beita, south of Nablus. Local sources named …

ODESSA: Ukraine clai­med on Thursday to have hit Russia’s flagship in the Black Sea with missiles, igniting a fire that Moscow said “seriously damaged” the warship as it accused Kyiv of helicopter strikes elsewhere over its territory. Even as Ukraine pushed to restart civilian evacuations ahead of a feared major offensive in the east, Russia claimed its own citizens were …

Israeli police raided the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on Friday with at least 20 wounded, medics said, in the first face-off in the area since the start of Ramazan. The Islamic endowment that runs the site said Israeli police entered in force before dawn on Friday, as thousands of worshippers were gathered at the mosque for early morning prayers, according to Al …

Jemima Goldsmith, the ex-wife of former prime minister Imran Khan, on Friday hit back at the PML-N after the party announced it would stage a protest outside her London residence in the aftermath of the PTI government’s ouster. On Thursday, PML-N leader Abid Sher Ali had said on Twitter that a protest would be held outside Jemima’s London home. He …

US State Department spokesman Ned Price has said the United States agreed with the statement given by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General (DG) a day ago wherein he dismissed an impression of a foreign “conspiracy” to oust former prime minister Imran Khan’s government. The senior US official made this statement during a press briefing in response to a question from …

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will seek to move on from the uproar caused by his COVID-19 lockdown fine by announcing a plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda to be processed. Johnson will set out the initiative in a speech on Thursday in Kent, south-east England, where thousands of migrants landed on Channel beaches in small boats last year, …

One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest allies warned NATO on Thursday that if Sweden and Finland joined the US-led military alliance then Russia would have to bolster its defences in the region, including by deploying nuclear weapons. Finland, which shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia, and Sweden are considering joining the NATO alliance. Finland will make a decision …

Sri Lanka’s prime minister offered talks on Wednesday with protesters calling for the government to step down over its handling of an economic crisis as the opposition threatened to bring a no-confidence motion against it in parliament. The island nation of 22 million people is in the throes of its worst financial crisis since independence in 1948, with a foreign …

LONDON: Boris Johnson has survived the initial fallout from becoming the first British prime minister to be fined for breaking the law, but his long-term position remains precarious, analysts said on Wednesday. The embattled UK leader offered a “full apology” on Tuesday after being penalised for breaching Covid lockdown laws by attending a brief celebration of his birthday in 2020, …

LONDON: A British judge on Wednesday sentenced a follower of the militant Islamic State group, Ali Harbi Ali, to a whole-life prison term for murdering lawmaker David Amess in a knife attack last year. “This is a murder that struck at the heart of democracy,” judge Nigel Sweeney said as he handed down his sentence at London’s Old Bailey courthouse, …