GENEVA: Israel, which was angered in February by the UN listing companies with activities in illegal Israeli settlements, has granted no visas to UN rights staff for months, the agency said on Friday. “Visa applications have not been formally refused, but the Israeli authorities have abstained from issuing or renewing any visas since June,” UN rights office spokesman Rupert Colville …

BANGKOK: Thai police used water cannon against protesters on Friday night in central Bangkok, as the pro-democracy activists defied an emergency decree banning gatherings for a second night running. Around 2,000 pro-democracy demonstrators in the city’s main shopping mall district had been chanting for the release of arrested activists and hurled obscenities at Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha. Several hundred riot …

ISTANBUL: A missile was fired into the sky on Friday on Turkey’s Black Sea coast where the military was expected to test its Russian-made S-400 defence systems, drawing a strong warning from the United States. The video, taken in the coastal city of Sinop, showed a narrow column of smoke headed high into the blue sky. In recent days Turkey …

LONDON: Britain said on Friday there was no point in holding any more Brexit talks without a dramatic softening of the EU’s position, bringing a potentially nasty divorce at the end of the year a step closer. Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded after a European Union summit on Thursday proposed a fresh round of talks next week in London, while …

SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter was wrong to block weblinks to an unverified political story, CEO Jack Dorsey said on Friday, as the company responded to criticism over its handling of the story that had prompted cries of censorship from the right. “Straight blocking of URLs was wrong, and we updated our policy and enforcement to fix,” he tweeted. “Our goal is to …

PARIS: A history teacher who had shown sketches of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in class was on Friday decapitated and his assailant shot dead by French police as they tried to arrest him, police and prosecutors said. French anti-terror prosecutors said they were investigating the assault which happened on the outskirts of Paris at around 5pm near a school in Conflans …

ISLAMABAD: The protesting lady health workers (LHWs) continued their sit-in at Jinnah Avenue near D-Chowk on Friday. The protesting women said they would not call off their sit-in until their demands were met. National Programme Health Employees Federation President Rukhsana Anwar told Dawn that the protest would continue until the government resolved their issues. She said the protesting women were facing several …

A missile strike levelled a row of homes in Azerbaijan’s second city of Ganja on Saturday, killing 12 and injuring more than 40 people in their sleep in a sharp escalation of the conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The early hours attack, which saw a second missile strike another part of Ganja and a third reach the nearby strategic …

PARIS: Millions of French people were looking forward to a last night of freedom on Friday before a Covid-19 curfew in Paris and other large cities comes into force for a least a month, prompted by an alarming surge in new cases. The curfew aims to keep some 20 million people home from 9pm to 6am — 30 per cent …

PML-N supremo and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday accused the security establishment of being behind his ouster as prime minister and for “bringing Imran Khan into power”. Nawaz, via video link from London, was addressing the Pakistan Democratic Movement’s (PDM) first power show in Gujranwala where top opposition leaders gathered to take forward their anti-government campaign. His comments …