All literature enthusiasts who grew up engrossed by Roald Dahl’s tales, are in for some major news. The acclaimed children’s author’s 1983 fantasy novel, The Witches, has been turned into a thrilling film and Hollywood star Anne Hathaway is taking the lead as the Grand High Witch. The first trailer of the exciting film was released by Warner Bros on Friday, …

Queen Elizabeth II had ‘deliberately’ not displayed the photo of Duke of Sussex Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle on the table during her Christmas speech in 2019. The Sun quoted new bombshell book the Battle of Brothers as saying that Prince Harry and Meghan, who stepped down as senior royals early in 2020, were left out of the pictures displayed on …

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will reopen the holy places for the year-round Umra pilgrimage on Sunday, scaled back and with extensive health precautions, seven months after coronavirus prompted its suspension. Umra usually attracts millions of Muslims from across the globe each year. It will be revived in three stages, with the initial phase seeing just 6,000 citizens and residents already within …

THE HAGUE: The global chemical weapons watchdog said on Friday that two investigations into alleged attacks in Syria in 2016 and 2018 couldn’t establish that chemicals were used as weapons in either case. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons issued two reports by its Fact-Finding Mission into attacks in Saraqib in the Idlib region on Aug 1, 2016, …

STEPANAKERT: Armenia accused Azerbai­jani forces of striking the main city in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region on Friday as fighting raged for a sixth day. Yerevan said it was ready to work with mediators for a ceasefire but Azerbaijan fired back and said that Armenia must first withdraw its troops. Baku and Yerevan have for decades been locked in a simmering …

LES MUREAUX: President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a plan on Friday to “defend” France’s secular values against “radical Islam”, announcing stricter oversight of schooling and better control over foreign funding of mosques. Describing Islam as “a religion in crisis” worldwide, Macron insisted that “no concessions” would be made in a new drive to eradicate “extremist religious teaching in schools and mosques”. …

India’s death toll from the novel coronavirus rose past 100,000 on Saturday, only the third country in the world to reach that bleak milestone, after the United States and Brazil, and its epidemic shows no sign of abating. Total deaths rose to 100,842, the health ministry said, while the tally of infections climbed to 6.47 million after a daily increase …

MADRID: Madrid’s regional leaders on Friday filed a legal challenge against the imposition of a partial lockdown across the capital and several nearby towns, just hours before it came into force. Presented to the National Court, the appeal challenges a central government decree which allows for the imposition of restrictions on the capital and nine other nearby towns to slow …

US President Donald Trump moved to a military hospital for treatment on Friday after being diagnosed with Covid-19 as his administration and re-election campaign scrambled to adjust to an extraordinary twist in his turbulent presidency. Roughly 17 hours after he announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, Trump walked slowly from the White House to a waiting helicopter to be taken …

RAWALPINDI: Five more staffers of educational institutions were found infected with Covid-19 in the last two days, taking the tally to 12. The random sampling for the virus was launched in educational intuitions of the Rawalpindi district on September 15. In the first phase from September 15 to September 23, seven patients were detected while in the second phase from …