International

LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) former information secretary Ahmad Jawad on Saturday announced joining the PML-N. “Ahmad Jawad announced joining the PML-N after calling on the party president and opposition leader in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif at his Model Town residence here on Saturday,” PML-N secretary general Ahsan Iqbal said in a tweet. Mr Iqbal said Prime Minister Imran …

RAWALPINDI: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) has completed the delimitation of Rawalpindi district, creating 122 neighbourhood councils and 106 village councils. The commission has sought objections on the new delimitation by Feb 25. After promulgation of the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2021 on Dec 13 last year, zoning committees started the delimitation process on Jan 11, and published the …

DUBAI: Hundreds of Afghans have launched a rare protest at a United Arab Emirates facility where they have been housed since fleeing their homeland last year, holding banners pleading for freedom and demanding to be sent to the United States to be resettled. Thousands of Afghans were last year evacuated to the Gulf Arab state on behalf of the United …

WASHINGTON: The White House has advised the chip industry to diversify its supply chain in case Russia retaliates against threatened US export curbs by blocking access to key materials, people familiar with the matter said. The potential for retaliation has garnered more attention in recent days after Techcet, a market research group, published a report on Feb 1 highlighting the …

PARIS: Thousands of protesters headed towards Paris on Friday in convoys from across France, with many hoping to blockade the capital in opposition to Covid vaccination rules and other restrictions despite police warnings to back off. Inspired by Canadian truckers paralysing border traffic with the US, the French protesters set off from Bayonne, Perpignan, Lyon, Lille, Strasbourg and elsewhere with …

WASHINGTON: After months of waiting, US President Joe Biden on Friday signed an executive order giving half of the $7 billion in frozen Afghan assets to Afghanistan, while keeping the other half for victims of the Sept 11 terror attacks. The US administration blocked the assets belonging to Afghanistan’s central bank, known as Da Afghan Bank or DAB in August …

KABUL: The Taliban have detained two foreign journalists on assignment with the UN refugee agency and a number of its Afghan staff working in the country’s capital, UNHCR said on Friday. The development in Kabul comes as President Joe Biden was expected to issue an executive order that would allow US financial institutions to facilitate access to $3.5 billion of …

MOSCOW: Russia is massing yet more troops near Ukraine and an invasion could come at any time, perhaps before the end of this month’s Winter Olympics, Washington said on Friday. Moscow, for its part, stiffened its truculent response towards Western diplomacy, saying answers sent this week by the EU and Nato to its security demands showed “disrespect”. Commercial satellite images …

United States President Joe Biden will speak to Vladimir Putin on Saturday after the United States warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could begin in days. Meanwhile, the US State Department has ordered non-emergency US embassy staff to leave Ukraine amid rising tensions with Russia. “Despite the reduction in diplomatic staff, the core embassy team, our dedicated Ukrainian colleagues, and State …

Renowned scholar Professor Noam Chomsky on Thursday said that Islamophobia has taken a “most lethal form” in India, turning some 250 million Indian Muslims into a “persecuted minority”. “The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India,” the famed author and activist, who is also Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute …