International

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has made it clear that it has nothing to do with the election and no-trust motion against the prime minister. In a statement issued on Thursday, it also said that its role in disqualifying a member of the National Assembly on the ground of defection started only after it received a reference through …

ISLAMABAD: Thousands of people have reserved graves in the H-11 and H-8 graveyard even though the latter was closed for the general public in 2007-08. There are two main graveyards in the capital — H-8 and H-11. Though the civic agency closed the H-8 graveyard years ago, VIPs, top bureaucrats and other influential people are still being buried there. After …

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has started its flight operations from Lahore and Karachi to Baku, Azerbaijan. A PIA spokesman said that two simultaneous national flag carrier’s flights with 340 passengers on board arrived in Baku — one flight departed from Karachi, while the other took off from Lahore on Wednesday. Simple cake-cutting ceremonies were held at Lahore and Karachi …

GENEVA: Yemen must not become a forgotten crisis behind Ukraine, organisers of Wednesday’s UN pledging conference said, warning of catastrophic hunger if donations were not forthcoming. The United Nations considers war-torn Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster — but the money preventing the situation from getting worse is now running out, they warned. “Today we are meeting to plug …

BRASILIA: The world’s oceans are suffocating form a lack of oxygen caused by global warming and human pollution from sewage and industrial waste, and we are running out of time to fix the problem, experts and diplomats warned on Wednesday. At a preparatory meeting in Brasilia for the United Nations Ocean Conference in June, they stressed that saving the oceans …

UNITED NATIONS: A staggering 95 percent of the Afghan population is not eating enough food, with that percentage rising to almost 100 per cent for female-headed households, warns a UN report. The report — released in New York on Tuesday evening — showed that the number of people facing acute hunger in Afghanistan had increased from 14 million in July …

RIYADH: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met with oil-rich Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to lobby for higher production on Wednesday after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent markets into turmoil. Johnson, one of the few Western leaders to visit Riyadh since the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, spoke …

SEOUL: North Korea fired a projectile on Wednesday but the launch appears to have immediately failed, Seoul said, with analysts warning it was likely a test of Pyongyang’s so-called “monster missile”. The launch — North Korea’s tenth suspected weapons test this year — comes after the US said the nuclear-armed country was preparing to fire an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) …

WASHINGTON: The United States and Iran are near to reaching an agreement over reviving the 2015 deal on limiting Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, the State Department said on Wednesday. “We are close to a possible deal, but we’re not there yet,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price. “We do think the remaining issues can be bridged.”

KYIV: New talk of compromise from both Moscow and Kyiv on a status for Ukraine outside of Nato lifted hope on Wednesday for a potential breakthrough after three weeks of war, but the hostilities, including the killing of civilians, continued on the ground. In other notable developments of the day, the UN’s top court asked Russia to end the invasion, …