KARACHI: Stocks faltered on Friday, the last session of the outgoing fiscal year, despite the passage of the tax-laden budget 2024-25, which set the course for the smooth securing of a new IMF loan. Initially starting on a positive note, the benchmark KSE 100 index came under pressure and failed to sustain bullish momentum as investors took profits amid predictions of a …

MOSCOW: Russia warned the United States on Friday its reconnaissance drone flights over the Black Sea risked leading to a “direct” military clash, issuing the threat days after angrily blaming Washington for a missile strike on Crimea. Ukraine’s attack on the Russian-annexed port of Sevastopol on Sunday drew fury from Moscow, which accused Kyiv of using US-supplied ATACMS missiles equipped with cluster …

NEW DELHI: The roof of a terminal building at New Delhi’s international airport partially collapsed in heavy rains early on Friday, killing one person, rescuers said, months after a refurbishment project inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Images posted online showed vehicles crushed under giant steel girders at the departure forecourt of the airport’s Terminal 1, one of several projects …

DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates has shortened Friday sermons at mosques to protect worshippers from severe heat, amid rising summer temperatures linked to climate change. The General Authority of Islamic Affairs, in a statement on Thursday, ordered preachers to limit Friday sermons to 10 minutes from June to October, when temperatures cool. The Friday sermons usually last for 20 minutes …

KABUL: Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities will meet international envoys in Qatar on Sunday for talks presented by the United Nations as a key step in an engagement process, but condemned by rights groups for sidelining Afghan women. The Taliban government has not been officially recognised by any state and the international community has wrestled with its approach to Afghanistan’s new rulers. When the …

STOCKTON: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday he was hurt and angry that a supporter of Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK party had been recorded making a racial slur about him, saying it was too important for him not to speak out. Sunak, Britain’s first ethnic-minority prime minister, was responding to comments broadcast by Channel 4 News, by a …

WASHINGTON: Prosecutors overstepped in charging January 6 rioters with obstruction for trying to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential election, the US Supreme Court said on Friday in a case that could see dozens of convictions overturned. The matter was brought to the court in the case of a former police officer Joseph Fischer, a supporter of former president Donald …

A fired-up Joe Biden came out swinging on Friday as he tried to make up for a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, insisting he was the right man to win November’s US presidential election. Biden’s appearance at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina came amid rumblings in his alarmed Democratic Party about replacing the 81-year-old as …

ISLAMABAD: An alleged major blunder made by the Capital Development Authority (CDA) and the federal government decades ago of making a selective change in the master plan of the city deprived residents of Islamabad of a railways network and centralised transportation centre. According to the city’s master plan prepared in 1960, sector I-8 was reserved for the main railway station …

RAWALPINDI: New Town police have booked an official on the charge of selling 33 mobile phones and other valuables seized from people arrested in May 9 incidents. The case was registered with New Town police on the directives of special judge Anti-Terrorism Court #1 Judge Malik Ijaz Asif in the wake of an inquiry report submitted by the police. The accused misappropriated the …