Acclaimed YouTuber Albert Dyrlund, from Denmark, died following a devastating accident that involved him falling in the Italian Alps while filming a video. The internet star, 22, fell from a height of 656 feet off Mount Seceda in Val Gardena. A helicopter had been deployed to rescue him, Dyrlund couldn’t be saved and was declared dead on the scene. Albert’s …

US President Joe Biden has appointed Pakistani-American lawyer Khizr Khan — also a critic of ex-president Donald Trump and the father of a soldier slain in Baghdad — as the commissioner for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, according to a statement released from the White House. The announcement is one of four such appointments and nominations, with the White House …

an Sixteen European parliamentarians on Friday wrote a letter to the European Commission on the “humanitarian situation” in Indian-occupied Kashmir, urging the European Union to raise its voice on the issue and take action. Addressed to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Vice President Josep Borrell, the letter said: “As a champion of universal human rights, fundamental freedoms …

GENEVA: The world is at risk of losing hard-won gains in fighting Covid-19 as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads, but WHO-approved vaccines remain effective, the World Health Organisation said on Friday. The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has described the Delta variant of the coronavirus as being as transmissible as chickenpox and cautioned it could cause …

WASHINGTON: Former president Donald Trump suffered twin setbacks on Friday when the US Justice Department cleared the way to release his tax records and disclosed a memo showing he urged top officials last year to falsely claim his election defeat was “corrupt”. The department, reversing course from the stance it took when Trump was in office, paved the way for …

ISLAMABAD: The ‘Extended Troika for Afghan Peace’ will meet in Doha early next month to review the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Special Russian Presidential Representative for Afghanistan Zamir Kabulov, during an online briefing from Moscow, announced that the meeting of the Extended Troika comprising Russia, China, the United States and Pakistan would be held next week. “We are in …

BEIJING: Hundreds of thousands of people in China were in coronavirus lockdown on Friday as the country battled its worst outbreak in months, while the United States intensified vaccination efforts in the face of a Delta variant-fuelled surge. The World Health Organisation has warned that the highly transmissible strain, first detected in India, could unleash more Covid-19 outbreaks in a …

LONDON: The US administration hopes that Pakistan will play a positive role in de-escalating violence in neighbouring Afghanistan, with a US State Department official saying “it is not in Pakistan’s interest to see Afghanistan in a civil war”. The statement was made by Zed Tarar, a spokesperson for the US State Department, who touched upon a range of issues being …

z SAN FRANCISCO: Big Tech goliaths like Facebook and Amazon unveiled whopping profits this week, showing their dominance in lockdown lifestyles is on course to grow well beyond the pandemic. “Tech wins the day, the week, and seemingly the year,” Futurum Research analysts said of the surging revenues, driven by digital advertising, cloud computing, gaming and booming use of smartphones …

COX’S BAZAR: Monsoon floods and landslides have cut off more than 300,000 people in villages across southeast Bangladesh and killed at least 20 people, including six Rohingya refugees, officials said on Friday. The region along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border where nearly one million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are in camps has been battered by torrential rain since Monday. “The floods have …