LAHORE: Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif met Finance Minis­ter Muhammad Aurangzeb on Monday and vowed to pull the country out of the current economic crisis. She said the finance minister will make people-friendly decisions for the economic turnaround. “To­­gether, we will pull Pakis­tan out of the economic crisis,” Ms Sharif said. Later, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif also called on …

Russia on Monday challenged assertions by the United States that the Islamic State (IS) militant group orchestrated a gun attack on a concert hall outside Moscow that killed 137 people and injured 182 more, accusing Washington of covering for Ukraine. In the deadliest attack inside Russia for two decades, four men burst into the Crocus City Hall on Friday night, spraying the …

JERUSALEM: Former US president Donald Trump warned Israel in an interview published on Monday that it was losing support over the crisis in Gaza, reiterating his call to “finish it up”. The comments from Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee to take on President Joe Biden in November’s US election, came as Washington abstained at a UN Security Council vote calling …

GAZA STRIP: Israeli forces fought fighters in besieged Gaza on Monday including around at least two major hospitals, raising fears for the patients, medics and displaced people trapped inside. Troops and tanks have encircled Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, the territory’s biggest, for a week and more recently moved on the Al-Amal Hospital in the main southern city of Khan Yunis. …

NEW YORK: Donald Trump was thrown a huge lifeline on Monday when an appeals court slashed what could have been a crippling demand for a nearly half-billion-dollar bond payment and also gave him 10 more days to pay. The Republican presidential candidate got the unexpectedly positive news about his New York civil fraud case while he was sitting in court …

WASHINGTON: The confirmation prospects for Adeel Abdullah Mangi, a Pakistani American nominated by President Joseph Biden for a US circuit judge of Appeals, seem increasingly precarious as partisan divisions deepen in the Senate. With Democrats holding only a slim 51-to-49 majority in the Senate and lacking Republican support, Mangi faces challenges securing the simple majority needed for confirmation. If confirmed, Mangi would …

PPP Central Information Secretary Faisal Karim Kundi on Tuesday asserted that opposition parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa would spring a “surprise” in the upcoming Senate elections. He made the remarks while addressing a press conference in Islamabad with PPP General Secretary Nayyer Bukhari and former Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) senator Talha Mahmood — who announced that he would be joining the party. …

A Balochistan Frontier Corps soldier was martyred while four terrorists were killed as security forces thwarted an attack on a naval base in Turbat last night, the military’s media affairs wing said on Tuesday. In a statement, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that terrorists attempted to attack PNS Siddique in Turbat last night. It said that the attempt was …

BRUSSELS: The European Union on Monday hit Apple, Google parent Alphabet and Meta with the first-ever probes under a mammoth digital law, which could lead to big fines against the US giants. Among six firms named as market “gatekeepers” under the EU’s landmark Digital Markets Act — along with Amazon, TikTok owner ByteDance and Microsoft — the companies have been …

MOSCOW: Russia has ordered at least seven men, accused of killing at least 137 people in a massacre at a concert hall in the Russian capital, to be held on “terror” charges, even as the death toll is expected to climb. The men face life in prison, although Russian officials have clamoured for the lifting of a moratorium on the death penalty …