ADDIS ABABA: The Ethiopian military will soon begin the “final phase” of an offensive in the northern Tigray region, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Thursday, after an ultimatum expired for Tigrayan forces to surrender. The government had given the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) until Wednesday to lay down their arms or face an assault on Mekelle, the regional …

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s pardon, which could be the first of several after he lost the presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden, drew condemnation from Democrats and other …

COPENHAGEN: Wiping away tears, Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen personally apologised on Thursday for the handling of a crisis where a mutated version of the new coronavirus prompted the government to cull of millions of minks bred on farms. The head of government was visiting a mink farmer in the municipality of Kolding, whose animals were euthanised despite being healthy, …

NEW DELHI: Indian police fired tear gas and water cannon on Thursday in clashes with several thousand farmers marching to New Delhi to protest against recent agricultural reforms. The confrontation happened when police tried to stop the farmers, from the northern state of Punjab, from crossing a bridge about 200 kilometres from Delhi. Armed with sticks and rocks, some of …

First a presidential farewell and now a visit by the one and only Cher? Kaavan may be ‘lonely’ but definitely loved. Iconic singer and actress Cher is set to visit Pakistan, reportedly today, to celebrate the departure of Kaavan, dubbed the “world’s loneliest elephant”, who will soon leave a Pakistani zoo for better conditions after years of lobbying by animal …

DUBAI: A flydubai aircraft landed in Dubai from Tel Aviv on Thursday, the first scheduled commercial flight between the two cities following the normalisation of ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel. “Welcome to Dubai,” an immigration officer said as the passengers from Israel filed off the plane and into the glitzy Gulf city, some of them waving and …

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he will leave the White House if the Electoral College formalises President-Elect Joe Biden’s victory even as he insisted such a decision would be a mistake as he spent his Thanksgiving renewing baseless claims that massive fraud and crooked officials in battleground states caused his election defeat. “Certainly I will. But you …

Lawmakers in Taiwan got into a fist fight and threw pig guts at each other on Friday over a soon-to-be enacted policy that would allow imports of US pork and beef. Premier Su Tseng-chang was due to give a regularly scheduled policy report to lawmakers on Friday morning about the pork policy when opposition party lawmakers from the Nationalist party, …

LAHORE: An accountability court on Thursday declared three members of the family of Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif abscon­ders as proceedings against them under Section 87 of the Criminal Procedure Code stood completed after they avoided their appearance in the money laundering and illegal assets reference. They include Shehbaz Sharif’s son Suleman, …

LAHORE: PML-N vice-president Maryam Nawaz will attend the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) Multan rally on Nov 30. “Nawaz Sharif has directed me to attend the meeting of the PDM,” Ms Nawaz told reporters at Jati Umra here on Thursday. She said Nawaz said she would have to forget her grief and attend the PDM rally. She will be attending the …