GENEVA: World Health Organization member states agreed Wednesday to start building a new international accord on how to handle future pandemics and ensure there can be no repeat of Covid-19.The economic turmoil and millions of lives lost during the coronavirus crisis triggered calls for new international defenses strong enough to prevent a future such disaster.At…
LONDON: The Issa brothers, who are among Britain’s richest men, have unveiled plans to build Europe’s largest Muslim cemetery on a massive plot in northern England. The Issa Memorial Gardens would be built west of the town of Blackburn — which has a sizable Muslim population — and would cover a space equivalent to roughly…
NEW DELHI: Lawmakers belonging to the Khasi tribe in northeast India are seeking to give equal inheritance rights to daughters and sons, in a move that women members of the group fear will introduce patriarchal norms to one of the world’s last matrilineal communities. In the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, women control property and inheritance.…
KANDAHAR: A small carpeted room serves as a makeshift jail for 12 “criminals” who are awaiting Taliban justice, caught in the legal system which the militants are building at the heart of their new Afghan regime. None of the prisoners being held on the ground floor of the Taliban headquarters in Panjwai district in southern Afghanistan…
NEW DELHI: India’s top medical body on Friday welcomed a study by respected medical journal The Lancet that rated the Indian-made coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine as nearly 78 percent effective and presenting no safety concerns. Developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, the Indian Council of Medical Research, and the National Institute of Virology, Covaxin is an inactivated…
LONDON/MILAN: Europe has become the epicenter of the pandemic again, prompting some governments to consider re-imposing unpopular lockdowns in the run-up to Christmas and stirring debate over whether vaccines alone are enough to tame COVID-19.Europe accounts for more than half of the average 7-day infections globally and about half of latest deaths, according to a…
HARGEISA, Somalia: Tiny, weeks-old cheetah cubs suckled from baby bottles and purred weakly, their condition still dangerously precarious after their rescue from the Horn of Africa’s illegal wildlife trade. Around half the cubs saved from traffickers do not survive the trauma — and there are real concerns for the smallest of this lot, a frail infant…
British tractor firm fails to carry out rights due diligence in Palestine, watchdog finds LONDON: JCB, the British tractor giant, was found by a watchdog to have failed to carry out due diligence human rights checks over the potential use of its equipment in the demolition of homes in Palestine. The government watchdog ruled: “It…
Taliban will get invite to next ‘troika plus’ meeting on Afghanistan: Pakistani minister ISLAMABAD: Representatives of the Taliban government will be invited to the next troika plus meeting on Afghanistan, Pakistan’s foreign minister said on Thursday. Shah Mahmood Qureshi’s announcement came as American, Chinese, and Russian envoys took part in a meeting of the influential group…
ROME: Women’s rights and the fight against fundamentalism were the main themes of the ninth Moroccan Italian festival being held in Italy until Saturday. The event, canceled last year due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, aims to strengthen links between the two countries while also celebrating the history and culture of the north African…
NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday hosted a regional security summit with officials from Russia, Iran and five Central Asian republics to discuss the situation in neighboring Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country. The two-day Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan is the first such meeting since the Taliban took control of the country following…
NEW DELHI: India on Wednesday hosted a regional security summit with officials from Russia, Iran and five Central Asian republics to discuss the situation in neighboring Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover of the country. The two-day Delhi Regional Security Dialogue on Afghanistan is the first such meeting since the Taliban took control of the country following…
Unearthed records disclose records of allied Punjabi fighters in First World War The records of 320,000 soldiers from Punjab who fought for the allies in the First World War have been made public by historians in Britain. The records had been held in the basement of Pakistan’s Lahore Museum in Pakistan for more than 97…
NEW YORK: Mounting trash. Closed firehouses. Fewer police and ambulances on the street.That’s the possibility New York City is bracing for come Monday as a COVID-19 vaccine mandate looms and thousands of municipal workers remain unwilling to get the shots.Police officers, firefighters, garbage collectors and most other city workers faced a 5 p.m. Friday…
KARACHI, Pakistan: It is more than five decades ago since Sabir Gul first arrived in Karachi from a small town in northwestern Pakistan but he still remembers the mild, cooling weather of the port city as he got off the bus to start a new life. That was in 1968, but since then Karachi has become…
LONDON: Britain’s plans to increase foreign aid spending back to pre-pandemic levels by 2024 have been welcomed by charities, but some have told Arab News that the delay could have serious humanitarian ramifications. Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced on Wednesday that London would return to its legal obligation to spend 0.7 percent of gross domestic product…
KARACHI, Pakistan: The closure of one of Pakistan’s major border crossings with Afghanistan is costing local businesses up to 150 million Pakistani rupees ($854,000) per day in lost trade, commerce chiefs claimed on Wednesday. Chaman is the second-largest commercial border point between the two countries and links the Balochistan province of Pakistan with Spin Boldak…
DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities and the UN are preparing to introduce formal education using a Myanmar curriculum for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. The fishing port in southeastern Bangladesh, hosts more than 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims — members of an ethnic and religious minority group who fled persecution in…
DHAKA: Bangladeshi authorities and the UN are preparing to introduce formal education using a Myanmar curriculum for hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children living in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. The fishing port in southeastern Bangladesh, hosts more than 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims — members of an ethnic and religious minority group who fled persecution in…
MUNICH: A Munich court on Monday sentenced a German woman who joined the Daesh group to 10 years in prison over the war crime of letting a five-year-old Yazidi “slave” girl die of thirst in the sun. The tribunal handed down the verdict to Jennifer Wenisch, 30, in one of the first convictions anywhere in the…
