International

LAHORE: Despite encountering heavy snowfall on its way to Istanbul, the third train carrying goods from Pakistan has entered Turkey, marking the successful operation of the Islamabad-Tehran-Istanbul (ITI) goods train, which resumed in December 2021 after being dormant for nearly a decade. The train is likely to reach its destination by Wednesday. Officials say delays were caused by extreme weather conditions during …

TRIPOLI: A convoy of fighters moved into Tripoli from the Libyan city of Misrata on Saturday to shore up the interim prime minister amid a push by the parliament to oust him in favour of its own candidate. Interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah has sworn he will hand over power only after an election and has rejected the move by …

KABUL: A “number” of British nationals are being detained in Afghanistan, the UK government said on Saturday, adding that it had raised the issue with the country’s Taliban authorities. The foreign ministry’s statement came a day after the Taliban released two overseas journalists who had been detained, including a former BBC correspondent. “We are providing support to the families of a number of …

DUBAI: US F-22 fighter jets arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, part of an American defence response to recent missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeting the country. The Raptors landed at Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, which hosts some 2,000 US troops. American soldiers there launched Patriot interceptor missiles in response to the Houthi attacks last month, the …

MOSCOW: With the risk of war looming larger, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden held a high-stakes telephone call on Saturday as a tense world watched and worried that an invasion of Ukraine could begin within days. Before talking to Biden, Putin had a telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, who met him in Moscow earlier in the …

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Elec­tronic Media Regulatory Auth­ority (Pemra) has issued a show-cause notice to NewsOne, a private TV channel, for airing ‘unethical’ remarks about the performance of a federal minister during a talk show. However, even before the legal formalities were completed and a show-cause notice was issued to NewsOne on Friday for airing ‘derogatory remarks’ about Minister for Commun­ications Murad Saeed ‘without any editorial …

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 …