International

WASHINGTON: The US Senate voted on Thursday to advance the nomination of Zahid Quraishi, a son of Pakistani immigrants, to be a federal judge in the US Court, New Jersey. “Once confirmed, Mr Qureshi of New Jersey will be the first Muslim American in US history to serve as an article 3 federal judge,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told …

WASHINGTON: US congresswoman Ilhan Omar faced a furious backlash on Thursday from colleagues across the political spectrum after the Muslim lawmaker accused the United States and Israel of “unthinkable atrocities” comparable to those of Hamas and the Taliban. Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to the US Congress, has antagonised or offended members of her Democratic Party …

KUNDUZ: Masked gunmen killed 10 people working for the Halo Trust mine-clearing organisation in northern Afghanistan in an attack the government blamed on the Taliban on Wednesday, but the Britain-based charity said the insurgents actually helped end the assault. The raid happened late on Tuesday as dozens of deminers were relaxing at a Halo compound in Baghlan province, around 260km …

DAMASCUS: Israeli air strikes in central Syria killed at least 11 government troops and militiamen late on Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The strikes were the first carried out by Israel in Syria since 11 days of heavy fighting with the Hamas rulers of Gaza ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on May 21, the Britain-based war monitor …

WASHINGTON: The US Senate voted 68-32 on Tuesday to approve a sweeping package of legislation intended to boost the country’s ability to compete with Chinese technology. An indignant China responded to the vote by saying it objected to being cast as an “imaginary” US enemy. The desire for a hard line in dealings with China is one of the few …

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Wednesday called on the international community to take urgent steps to curb Islamophobia. He said this in a telephone call with Foreign Minister of Canada Marc Garneau on the murder of four Muslims of Pakistani origin in London, Ontario, in an Islamophobic attack. “The Islamophobic attack is a matter of serious concern and has caused …

WASHINGTON: The White House dropped Trump-era executive orders intended to ban the popular apps TikTok and WeChat and will conduct its own review aimed at identifying national security risks with software applications tied to China, officials said on Wednesday. A new executive order directs the Commerce Department to undertake what officials describe as an evidence-based analysis of transactions involving apps …

AMSTERDAM: Fastly Inc., the company behind a major global internet outage this week, said on Wednesday the incident was caused by a bug in its software that was triggered when one of its customers changed their settings. Tuesday’s outage raised questions about the reliance of the internet on a few infrastructure companies. Fastly issue knocked out high traffic sites including …

Israeli officials said on Tuesday they would allow a right-wing march in Jerusalem’s Old City to go ahead next week under certain conditions, a day after police barred the event’s route fearing it would rekindle violence between Israel and Palestinian fighters in Gaza. Several right-wing Israeli groups had planned a flag-waving procession through the walled Old City’s Damascus Gate and …

KIEV: Vladimir Putin’s Russia is morphing into a “dictatorship” intent on punishing and sidelining critics ahead of parliamentary elections, says Dmitry Gudkov, an opposition figure who recently fled to Ukraine. The 41-year-old former lawmaker unexpectedly announced on social media on Sunday that he had crossed Russia’s borders and was headed for Kiev to shield his family from Kremlin reprisals for …