LAGOS: Twenty medical students on their way to an annual convention were kidnapped in eastern Nigeria, police and university sources said on Saturday. The Federation of Catholic Medical and Dental Students said in a statement released on Saturday that the students were travelling to the convention in the city of Enugu when they were abducted on Thursday evening. Fortune Olaye, the secretary general of the Nigerian Medical Students’ Association, said that 20 students from the Maiduguri and Jos universities and one doctor travelling with them had been kidnapped. He said there had been a ransom demand in return for their…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
TRIPOLI: Reemerging bloodshed and power struggles in Libya have raised fears of a broader escalation, threatening to deal a fatal blow to the UN-brokered political transition and push the war-torn country deeper into turmoil. The vast North African country of 6.8 million people has struggled to recover from years of conflict after the 2011 Nato-backed uprising that overthrew longtime dictator Moamer Qadhafi. Libya remains divided between a UN-recognised government based in the capital Tripoli and a rival administration in the east, backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar. Although relative calm has returned in recent years, clashes still periodically break out…
BANGKOK: Thailand’s billionaire former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra received a royal pardon shortening his parole by two weeks, his lawyer said on Saturday, a day after his daughter was elected premier by parliament. Thaksin has been at the heart of a two-decade power struggle between the Shinawatra family and its allies on the one hand, and, on the other, a nexus of royalists, generals and old-money families that have long wielded influence over Thai governments and institutions. After a dramatic return last August from self-exile to avoid jail time in the wake of his overthrow in a 2006 military coup,…
LONDON: A team of UK divers has hailed the discovery of a wreck off Scotland believed to be a Royal Navy warship sunk during World War I but still “virtually intact”. The team found what it thinks is HMS Hawke — which sank after being hit by a German torpedo in Oct 1914 — in the North Sea earlier this week. Paul Downs, who was among the divers and filmed footage of the long-lost wreck, described it as “a once in a lifetime” discovery given its “unbelievable” condition. “She is virtually intact,” he said. “The state of preservation is unbelievable…
Some Indian junior doctors remained off the job on Sunday, demanding swift justice for a colleague who was raped and murdered, despite the end of a 24-hour strike called by the country’s biggest association of doctors. Doctors across the country have held protests and candlelight marches and have refused to see non-emergency patients in the past week after the killing of the 31-year-old postgraduate student of chest medicine around the early hours of August 9 in the eastern city of Kolkata. Women activists say the incident at the British-era R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital has highlighted how women in India continue…
DOHA: A senior Hamas official on Saturday dismissed optimistic talk by US President Joe Biden that a Gaza truce is nearer after negotiations in the Gulf emirate of Qatar. “To say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion,” Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri said. “We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats.” He was responding to Biden’s comment on Friday that, “We are closer than we have ever been.” Biden spoke after two days of talks in Qatar where Washington tried to bridge differences between Israel…
MOSCOW: The strongman leader of Russia’s Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, published a video on Saturday showing him driving a gun-mounted Tesla Cybertruck and praising the carmaker’s billionaire owner Elon Musk. Kadyrov, who has ruled Chechnya with an iron fist for over 17 years, is a vocal ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin and says he has deployed thousands of troops to help the Kremlin with its Ukraine offensive. The 47-year-old Chechen leader could be seen behind the wheel of the truck as he drove in the regional capital Grozny, a video posted on his Telegram channel showed. A machinegun appeared…
QUETTA: The Quetta Metropolitan Corporation (QMC) has terminated the services of 1,400 “ghost” employees, who were on its payroll for the past many years. QMC Administrator Mohammad Hamza Shafqaat while confirming the sackings on Saturday said the decision had been taken after an investigation found these daily wage earners to be ghost employees. “These employees had become a huge burden on the corporation which has been facing a financial crisis for a long time,” he said. Mr Shafqaat, who is also the Quetta division commissioner, stated that most of the dismissed employees belonged to sanitation, fire brigade and other departments.…
BEIRUT: At least 27 people, including two children, were killed in Israeli air strikes, with around 10 fatalities in Nabatieh, south Lebanon, and at least 17 in the Gaza town of Zawayda, according to health officials. The 10 victims of Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon were all Syrian citizens, state news agency NNA said, adding that a final toll of the strike would be announced after DNA tests were conducted to determine the identity of the victims. The Israeli military said the airstrike targeted a weapons depot used by Hezbollah fighters. The Israeli strike came after ceasefire talks between Palestinian Islamist group…
QUETTA: While the federal and provincial information commissions have completed three terms, the body has yet to be formed in Balochistan despite three years since the law was passed. The commission was supposed to be formed under the Balochistan Right To Information Act, which was passed in 2021. This was said during the inaugural programme of the Right to Information project by Aid Balochistan on Saturday. The event was attended by political and social leaders, bureaucrats, journalists, and lawyers. They stated that the implementation of the right to information law had yet to materialise in Balochistan. Politicians, activists say access…
