Kuwait’s foreign minister said on Friday that progress had been made towards ending a Gulf row that has seen Saudi Arabia and its allies boycott Qatar for over three years while his Qatari counterpart voiced optimism a resolution could be reached. The United States and Kuwait have worked to end the dispute after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has rejected as ‘incorrect’ and ‘misleading’ the assertions made by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding the legal proceedings currently taking place in the case of Indian naval commander Kulbhushan Sudhir Jadhav. “It is evident that by casting aspersions on the Indian High Commission’s own legal counsel, the Indian government is looking for an escape from …

BEIJING: A Chinese spacecraft lifted off from the moon on Thursday night with a load of lunar rocks, the first stage of its return to Earth, the government space agency reported. Change 5, the third Chinese spacecraft to land on the moon and the first to take off from it again, is the latest in a series of increasingly ambitious …

CHITTAGONG: Bangladesh transported more than 1,600 Rohingya refugees to a low-lying island on Friday in the first phase of a controversial planned relocation of 100,000 people. Almost a million Rohingya — most of whom fled a military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar three years ago — live in squalid camps in southeastern Bangladesh. Any return to Myanmar appears unlikely for now. …

BERLIN: German divers who recently fished an Enigma encryption machine out of the Baltic Sea, used by the Nazis to send coded messages during World War II, handed their rare find over to a museum for restoration on Friday. The legendary code machine was discovered last month during a search for abandoned fishing nets in the Bay of Gelting in …

BRUSSELS: European doubts over a post-Brexit trade deal with Britain boiled over on Friday with France threatening a veto as tricky negotiations entered what could be their final hours. As night fell in London, EU and UK negotiators Michel Barnier and David Frost were locked in last-minute debates over fishing rights, fair trade rules and an enforcement mechanism to govern …

PARIS: Global coronavirus infections passed 65 million on Friday and countries doubled down on restrictions, even as plans to roll out vaccines gathered pace. Joe Biden said he would ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days when he takes over as president of the United States, the world’s worst-hit country from a pandemic that has now killed more than …

ISTANBUL: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he hoped France would get rid of Emmanuel Macron as soon as possible, the latest salvo in an escalating war of words between the two leaders. Turkey is embroiled in a series of disputes with France and its EU partners, from tensions in the eastern Mediterranean to the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region. …

Eighteen people have died after being trapped in a mine in China’s southwestern city of Chongqing, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday, the region’s second such accident in just over two months. The dead were among 24 people trapped underground by excessive levels of carbon monoxide gas at the Diaoshuidong coal mine, the agency said, adding that one survivor had …

Bahrain will not allow the import of Israeli goods produced in settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, state news agency BNA reported, disavowing comments made by the Gulf state’s trade minister earlier this week. Bahrain’s Industry, Commerce and Tourism Minister Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani had voiced openness to settlement imports, adding that Manama would make no distinction between products produced in Israel or …