International

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi arrived in Kabul on Thursday, leading a high-level delegation to meet with Afghan officials and leaders on bilateral relations and ways to strengthen cooperation, the Foreign Office (FO) said in a statement. Footage released by state broadcaster Associated Press of Pakistan shows Qureshi disembarking the plane, followed by Inter-Services Intelligence chief Lieutenant General Faiz Hameed. They are …

Pakistan has called on the United Nation’s Decolonisation Committee and the Security Council to take action to end India’s colonialisation of Jammu and Kashmir and enable its people to exercise their right to self-determination. “Eradicating colonialism is part of the unfinished agenda of the United Nations,” Ambassador Munir Akram emphasised in a speech to the General Assembly’s Special Political and …

Britain on Tuesday said it was monitoring a subvariant of the Delta strain of the coronavirus, which has been seen in a growing number of cases. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said the government was keeping a “close eye” on the AY.4.2 variant but said there was no evidence it spreads more easily. “As you would expect, we are monitoring it closely …

DAMASCUS: At least 13 people have reportedly died on Wednesday in a blast inside a bus carrying soldiers near the President Bridge, Syrian state media reported. There are no updated numbers on the casualties yet since it’s a developing story but the agencies have reported the bus suffered two bombs. Pictures on the state TV channel’s account showed the gutted …

A Chinese-made Korean War epic ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’ has topped the global box office, tapping a vein of rising patriotism in China and prompting moviegoers to post videos of themselves eating frozen potatoes to emulate the hardships endured by soldiers in the conflict. “The Battle at Lake Changjin”, released to coincide with China’s Oct. 1 national holiday, had …

Russia hosts the Taliban for talks in Moscow on Wednesday, seeking to assert its influence on Central Asia and push for action against Islamic State fighters which it says have massed in perennially volatile Afghanistan. The talks, which draw officials from 10 countries including China and Pakistan, are one of the Taliban’s most significant international meetings since seizing power in …

United States President Joe Biden is nominating Donald Armin Blome, an expert on Middle East affairs, as his new ‘Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’, the White House announced on Tuesday. Donald Armin Blome, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service belonging to the class of minister-counselor, is currently the US ambassador to Tunisia. Prior to that, …

Russia hosts the Taliban for talks in Moscow on Wednesday, seeking to assert its influence on Central Asia and push for action against Islamic State (IS) fighters which it says have massed in perennially volatile Afghanistan. The talks, which draw officials from 10 countries including China and Pakistan, are one of the Taliban’s most significant international meetings since seizing power in mid-August. …

Dr Rachel Levine, the United States assistant health secretary, was sworn in as the country’s first transgender four-star officer on Tuesday, local media reported. The 63-year-old was picked by US President Joe Biden to be his assistant secretary of health in January and her appointment was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year. She is also the highest-ranking openly transgender official in …

A grenade was thrown at a Taliban vehicle in the Afghan capital on Wednesday morning, wounding two fighters and four nearby school children, government officials said. “This morning a grenade was thrown at a mujahideen vehicle in Deh Mazang, wounding two mujahideen,” Taliban interior ministry spokesman Qari Sayed Khosti told AFP. Another official said: “Our initial information shows four school students …