RABAT: Jewish history and culture in Morocco will soon be part of the school curriculum — a “first” in the region and in the North African country, where Islam is the state religion. The decision “has the impact of a tsunami,” said Serge Berdugo, secretary general of the Council of Jewish Communities of Morocco. It “is a first in the …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Sunday categorically rejected terrorism-related insinuations of Indian external affairs minister and other political figures. “Regurgitating of baseless allegations does not turn them into truth. Nor does it wash away the fact of India’s state sponsorship of terrorism against Pakistan and master-minding of anti-Pakistan propaganda globally,” a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said in a statement issued here. …

BAKU: Azerbaijan anno­unced on Sunday that four of its troops had been killed in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region since a peace deal with Armenian separatists was agreed in early November. The defence ministry said a group of Armenian fighters remained in the mountainous province — breaking the terms of the Russian-brokered truce — and had recently launched fatal attacks on …

BRUSSELS: British and European negotiators were sent back to work on Sunday after Prime Minister Boris Johnson and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen agreed to abandon their supposed make-or-break deadline. The pair had said last week they would decide whether an agreement was possible by the end of Sunday, but after a cross-Channel crisis call they agreed to “go …

KANDAHAR: Dozens of Taliban fighters were killed in fierce overnight fighting between Afghan forces and militants who attacked multiple checkpoints in the insurgent bastion of Kandahar, officials said on Sunday. Taliban militants attacked checkpoints in five districts surrounding the city of Kandahar, which Afghan forces countered with heavy air and ground assaults, the ministry of defence said in a statement. …

LAHORE: Renowned religious scholar Maulana Tariq Jameel was admitted to a hospital on Sunday after testing positive for coronavirus. The Maulana announced on his Twitter account: “I was not feeling well from the last few days and on getting tested for Covid-19, it came positive and was admitted to the hospital on the advice of the doctors.” He requested his …

bide Electors will gather in state capitols across the United States on Monday (today) to formally vote for Joe Biden as the next US president, effectively ending President Donald Trump’s frenzied but failing attempt to overturn his loss in the Nov 3 election. The state-by-state votes, traditionally an afterthought, have taken on outsized significance this year in light of Trump’s …

Hackers broke into the networks of the Treasury and Commerce Departments as part of a months long global cyberespionage campaign revealed Sunday, just days after the prominent cybersecurity firm FireEye said it had been breached in an attack that industry experts said bore the hallmarks of Russian tradecraft. In response to what may be a large-scale penetration of US government agencies, the …

KARACHI: Amid the growing number of coronavirus cases with Karachi emerging as a key hotspot urban centre in the country, a 100-bed Covid-19 Infectious Disease and Research Centre at the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH) is feared to close its operation after less than a month it became functional as the local administration has failed to meet its financial commitment for …

RAWALPINDI: In a second blast in the garrison city of Rawalpindi this month, over two dozen people including women and children were injured in the busy Ganj Mandi area on Sunday. The explosion, which took place at around 2pm just a few hundred metres from the Ganj Mandi police station and close to a water filtration plant, also damaged a …