WASHINGTON: A day after US State Department endorsed the demand for probing allegations of election rigging through legal means, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged authorities and political leaders in Pakistan to address the post-election situation through legal means, emphasising the need for a peaceful resolution. At a news briefing at the UN headquarters in New York on Monday, the …

PARIS: When Lucas was diagnosed with a rare type of brain tumour at the age of six, there was no doubting the prognosis. French doctor Jacques Grill gets emotional when he remembers having to tell Lucas’s parents that their son was going to die. However, seven years later, Lucas is now 13 years old and there is no trace of …

TBILISI: Armenia said on Tuesday that four of its soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani fire along the heavily militarized border, the first fatal incident since they began negotiating a deal to end more than 30 years of intermittent war last year. Fatal exchanges have been common along the closed, roughly 1,000 km frontier since 1988 when Armenia and Azerbaijan first …

GENEVA: Dismantling the UN agency for Palestinian refugees would be a disaster, its chief said Tuesday, as pressure rose after Israel said it had found a Hamas tunnel beneath its Gaza headquarters. UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini called for an independent investigation once the conflict is over, looking into the tunnel allegations and the destruction of UN premises in the Gaza …

PARIS: Iranian authorities have handed down a jail sentence of over five years to the uncle of Mahsa Amini — the young Iranian-Kurdish woman whose death in custody sparked months of protests — over his anti-government views expressed during the 2022 demonstrations, rights groups said on Tuesday. Safa Aeli, 30, was sentenced to five years and four months in prison by the …

BANGKOK: Jailed former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra is to be freed, the kingdom’s justice minister said Tuesday, possibly as soon as the weekend — just six months after returning from 15 years of self-imposed exile. The controversial billionaire, twice elected premier and ousted in a 2006 military coup, was jailed for eight years on graft and abuse of power charges in …

CAIRO: Officials from the US, Egypt, Israel and Qatar met in Cairo on Tuesday in another bid to agree a Gaza truce as calls grew for Israel to hold back on a planned assault on the enclave’s southernmost city, crammed with over a million displaced people. Renewed efforts were underway to secure a truce in a war whose impact has …

Indonesian authorities were counting votes cast on Wednesday in the world’s biggest single-day election, headlined by the race to succeed President Joko Widodo, whose influence could determine who takes the country’s helm. The race to replace Widodo, popularly known as Jokowi, pits two former governors, Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan, against controversial frontrunner Prabowo Subianto, the defence minister and a former …

Indian riot police fired tear gas on Wednesday at columns of farmers on tractors seeking to breach heavily guarded barricades and march on the capital to demand higher crop prices. Farmers in India this week launched a “Delhi Chalo”, or “March to Delhi”, in an echo of January 2021, when farmers breached barricades and rolled into New Delhi on Republic Day during their …

ISLAMABAD: The United Nations named Pakistan’s Living Indus Initiative (LII) as one of the seven UN World Restoration Flagship programmes that will restore more than 30 per cent of the Indus River Basin by 2030, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) announced on Tuesday. The LII seeks to spearhead and unify various efforts aimed at revitalising the ecological well-being of the …