WASHINGTON: Deciding its first-ever cases, Facebook’s oversight board ruled on Thursday that the social media company was wrong to remove four of five pieces of content the board reviewed, including posts Facebook took down for violating rules on hate speech and harmful Covid misinformation. The first rulings will be scrutinised to see how independent the board appears from the world’s …

WASHINGTON: The US Department of Homeland Security issued a national terrorism bulletin on Wednesday, warning of a lingering potential for violence from people motivated by anti-government sentiment after President Joe Biden’s election, suggesting the Jan 6 riot at the Capitol may embolden extremists and set the stage for additional attacks. The department did not cite any specific plots, but pointed …

After opening itself to New Year’s revellers, Dubai is now being blamed by several countries for spreading the coronavirus abroad, even as questions swirl about the city-state’s ability to handle reported record spikes in virus cases. The government’s Dubai Media Office says the sheikhdom is doing all it can to handle the pandemic, though it has repeatedly declined to answer …

In his first statement on Pakistan as the United States secretary of state, Antony Blinken said America was ready to prosecute Omar Saeed Sheikh — the principal accused in the 2002 beheading of American journalist Daniel Pearl — in US courts, a day after he was acquitted by the Supreme Court. On Thursday, a three-judge Supreme Court bench acquitted Sheikh by extending …

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called on nuclear-armed India and Pakistan to “come together and seriously discuss their problems” stemming from the unresolved Kashmir dispute, saying his good offices were always available for mediation. Responding to a question from an APP correspondent at his first press conference of 2021, the UN chief warned that there was no “military solution” …

In his first telephone call to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Thursday, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration was reviewing the US-Taliban peace deal and the insurgents’ commitment to the agreement. On Thursday afternoon, the State Department issued a readout of the Blinken-Ghani conversation, which reiterates the new US administration’s commitment to an enduring US-Afghanistan …

Lawyers filed a last-ditch attempt to overturn the acquittal of a British-born militant convicted of masterminding the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, a government prosecutor said Friday. The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal against a Sindh High Court’s (SHC) decision to clear Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh and three others over the killing, after nearly two decades in …

LAHORE: Five students who had been leading the agitation against the holding of on-campus examinations in the city over the last two weeks were arrested in an early morning police raid on a house in Iqbal Town here on Thursday. The raid was conducted by a heavily armed police team on the house of Sanaullah, a student activist, in Raza …

Britain is banning direct passenger flights from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Friday (today), shutting down the world’s busiest international airline route from Dubai to London. Britain said it was adding the UAE, Burundi and Rwanda to its coronavirus travel ban list because of worries over the spread of a more contagious and potentially vaccine-resistant Covid-19 variant first identified …

ISLAMABAD: The scrutiny committee of the Election Commission of Pakistan has finally received from scheduled banks the details of accounts maintained by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the committee will tally them from the details the party has provided to the ECP. This was disclosed by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) lawmaker Farrukh Habib while talking to reporters after brief proceedings …