WASHINGTON: Presi­dent Joe Biden on Friday said there is no plan for an imminent withdrawal of the final US troops in Afghanistan. “No. We’re on, we’re on track exactly as to where we expect to be,” he told reporters at the White House, following growing speculation the final contingents were due to leave within the next few days. Biden has …

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West communicate on a daily basis with each other over their kids. “It’s not daily, a lot of it is done mostly through their assistants. Divorce and business issues is left to the attorneys to discuss. Kim and Kanye are not haggling over petty possessions. That’s pretty much all been worked out already,” a source said. …

BEITA: Israeli settlers left an illegal outpost in the occupied West Bank on Friday in adherence to an agreement struck with nationalist premier Naftali Bennett’s new government, reporters and a settler leader said. With Israeli military and police on site, the last cars streamed out of Eviatar — near the Palestinian city of Nablus — in compliance with the 4pm …

BAGHDAD: A widespread power outage hit Iraq on Friday as temperatures reached scorching levels, affecting millions of Iraqis, including those in affluent areas in the capital of Baghdad and stirring concerns of widespread unrest. Iraq’s grid was generating just over 4,000 megawatts, according to Ministry of Electricity data on Friday morning significantly less than the 12,000-17,000 megawatts the grid generates …

SRINAGAR: Five fighters and an Indian soldier were killed on Friday in the latest of a series of clashes in India-occupied Kashmir that have left 17 dead in two weeks. The six died in Rajpora in a gunfight that started on Thursday night. Police said the five fighters were members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group. The occupied region has seen a …

WINNIPEG: Protesters have toppled statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II in the Canadian city of Winnipeg as anger grows over the discovery of the remains of hundreds of children in unmarked graves at former indigenous schools. A crowd chanted “no pride in genocide” before pulling down the statues of the monarchs. The action took place on Canada Day …

WASHINGTON: The Boy Scouts of America has reached an $850 million settlement with groups representing tens of thousands of men with sexual abuse claims, a major step towards addressing a deluge of accusations that sent the organisation into bankruptcy. In a filing on Thursday with the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, the Boy Scouts (BSA) said the settlement with the …

Reacting strongly to Pakistan’s inclusion in the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) list by the United States, the Foreign Office on Friday said the move depicted “a factual error and lack of understanding”, and urged Washington to review the “baseless assertions” made against the country in the State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, 2021. The US added Pakistan and Turkey …

LUSAKA: African leaders and diplomats on Friday joined Zambia in mourning its founding president and liberation hero Kenneth Kaunda, who died last month aged 97 after a bout of pneumonia. “KK”, as he was affectionately known, ruled over Zambia from 1964, when the southern African nation won its independence from Britain, until losing an election in 1991. He died on …

Turkey’s foreign ministry has slammed a United States report on human trafficking that criticised Ankara for providing “operational, equipment, and financial support” to an armed militia in Syria that recruits child soldiers. In a statement late on Friday, the Turkish foreign ministry said it “completely rejects” the claim and its record is clean. The statement also accuses Washington of “double standards and …