The Locarno Film Festival opens Wednesday, with thousands set to return to the open-air giant screen in the idyllic Swiss town after last year’s edition was forced online by the pandemic. Founded in 1946, Locarno is one of the world’s longest-running annual film festivals and focuses on auteur cinema. Held on the shores of Lake Maggiore, in the Italian-speaking Ticino …

Prime Minister Imran Khan and Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on Thursday called out India over its continuous “inhuman military siege” and “unprecedented oppression” in occupied Kashmir. Their rebuke came as the country observed Youm-e-Istehsal Kashmir (the day of exploitation) to mark two years since New Delhi stripped the valley of its special autonomy. The prime minister, …

UNITED NATIONS: Two days after India assumed the presidency of the UN Security Council, the spokesperson for the secretary general has clarified that the UN position on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute has not changed. The clarification followed a statement by India’s UN Ambassador T. S. Tirmurti that the disputed state was now an “integral” part of India. At a …

CHITRAL: Chitral has been facing acute shortage of sugar due to a tussle between the district administration and the dealers over its pricing. The traders said the district administration had fixed retail price of sugar at Rs85 per kilogramme, while the whole sellers got it at Rs104 per kg from the open market in Dir and Batkhela, and sold it …

RAWALPINDI: Commissioner Syed Gulzar Hussain Shah on Wednesday cancelled the land acquisition in Rawalpindi and Attock for the construction of Rawalpindi Ring Road project and asked the district administration to form teams for recovery of Rs2.45 billion paid to the landowners. The corruption allegation in the Ring Road project led to cancellation of land acquisition. An inquiry at the highest …

MANSEHRA: The Water and Power Development Authority has decided to involve the Chinese ambassador to convince the Gezhouba Group Company for the resumption of work on the Dasu hydropower project. The execution of the 4,320 megawatts project in Upper Kohistan district came to a halt after a bus explosion left 13people, including nine Chinese workers, dead in Dasu area on …

The officer who fatally shot a man near a Forest Hill gas station in June faces a felony charge after the Texas Rangers determined that the slain man did not pose a threat to police or anyone else. Logan Andrew Barr Jr.(Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department) Logan Andrew Barr Jr., 23, of Keller was arrested July 28 on one count of …

Ashanti Ferrell feared her sister was dead, but she pleaded for help anyway in a 911 call played for jurors Wednesday. “My sister’s been shot and she cannot move. Can you help us, please. I don’t want her to die,” Ferrell cried in the recording. Prosecutors presented the call at the start of the murder trial for Jeremy Lamont Warren, …

An emotional jury acquitted a Dallas man accused of killing the woman he planned to soon wed. Victor Williams used the mask he wore to guard against COVID-19 as a tissue and cried as State District Judge Audra Riley read the jury’s verdict of not guilty Wednesday afternoon, marking the end of his murder trial. Jurors had previously been divided …

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said this week that agricultural specialists with the agency in recent months have intercepted two species of pests that are rare in the U.S. at ports of entry at the Texas-Mexico border. One of the two, Cyclocephala forcipulata, a species from the scarab beetle family that is found in Mexico, was found July 7 in a shipment …