WELLINGTON: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and the nation’s greatest cricketer Richard Hadlee led the tributes on Thursday after the Black Caps claimed the inaugural World Test Championship (WTC) by beating India. Kane Williamson’s team became Test cricket’s first official world champions after prevailing by eight wickets in Southampton on Wednesday, the reserve day of a match plagued by …

Google’s Chrome web browser will not fully block tracking cookies until late 2023, the Alphabet company said on Thursday, delaying by nearly two years a move that has drawn antitrust concerns from competitors and regulators. Google had wanted to bar reams of ad-personalization companies from gathering users’ browsing interests through cookies from January 2022. But rivals accused the world’s biggest …

More than half of young adults with mild COVID-19 who self-isolated at home were still reporting troublesome after-effects six months later, a study from Norway published on Wednesday in Nature Medicine found. The study included 312 COVID-19 survivors over age 16, with illnesses of varying severity. Overall, at six months, 189 patients, or 61%, reported persistent symptoms. Of the 61 …

LONDON: The European Championship is well and truly up for grabs as the tournament enters the knockouts after a compelling group stage in which some top nations fell short of expectations while two fallen powers staged a resurgence. Italy and the Netherlands, who both failed to qualify for the last World Cup, have played some of the best football and …

KARACHI: Peshawar Zalmi were left heartbroken for the third time in four seasons as Multan Sultans outclassed them by 47 runs in the final to clinch their maiden HBL Pakistan Super League crown at the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium in Abu Dhabi on Thursday. Chasing a record target of 207 in a decider, Peshawar’s reply never got going as a …

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Thursday announced the programme of national team’s England tour during which the tourists will play three One-day Inter­nationals and as many T20 Internationals. The Babar Azam-led Pakistan squad will travel to Birmingham on Friday on a chartered flight from Abu Dhabi. First, a group of eight officials and three cricketers will leave Lahore …

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has renewed the licences of Telenor, Ufone and Jazz to operate in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan for another 15 years. These licences were to be expired on June 25 (today). PTA chairman Amir Azeem Bajwa and chief executive officers (CEOs) of Telenor, Jazz and Ufone along with senior representatives of these cellular …

Abu Dhabi: Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) today announced the team of Pakistan Super League (PSL) season six after Multan Sultans clinched the trophy over Peshawar Zalmi for the first time last night. The team includes three players each from Islamabad United and Multan Sultans, two players each from Lahore Qalandars and Peshawar Zalmi, and one player from Karachi Kings. No players …

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has secured a $4.5 billion worth of three-year trade financing facility from Jeddah-based Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) to cover import cost of crude, petroleum products and liquefied natural gas (LNG). A formal financing framework agreement on the arrangement would be signed early next week here, informed sources told Dawn. The funds would be utilised under Annual Financing Plan …