HONG KONG: The residents of Hong Kong crowded supermarkets and fresh food markets on Monday to stock up on vegetables, noodles and other necessities after a record number of Covid-19 infections in the city and transport disruptions at the border with mainland China. The city of 7.5 million people reported a record 614 coronavirus cases on Monday, in the biggest test yet for the Chinese territory’s zero-Covid strategy. Hong Kong imports 90 per cent of its food supplies, with the mainland its most important source, especially for fresh food. Consumers have already seen a shortage of some foreign imported goods,…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
MOSCOW: French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday he hoped to make a start towards a de-escalation of tensions over Ukraine, as he began talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Macron flew into Moscow at the start of a week of intense Western diplomacy aimed at easing fears of a Russian invasion of its pro-Western neighbour. Sitting across a long table from Putin at the Kremlin, Macron said he was in Moscow to address the “critical situation” in Europe. “This discussion can make a start in the direction in which we need to go, which is towards a…
LONDON: A detective constable from the Met Police’s counter-terrorism department was cross-examined at the Kingston-upon-Thames court on Monday, as the incitement to violence trial against MQM supremo Altaf Hussain entered its second week. The officer informed the court about evidence retrieved during a raid at the Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s international secretariat at Edgware, London, in 2019. The officer spoke of the recovery of a BT enterprise voice recorder, which was later examined forensically for its digital contents. The recorder was capable of making and recording audio calls that were made to and from the London secretariat. The language used in…
SRINAGAR: An Indian court on Monday gave a Kashmiri freelance journalist two days to appear before it over a police complaint that he had acted against the public interest by sharing information on social media about a militant attack on a policeman. The complaint against Gowhar Nazir Geelani comes days after the editor of web portal Kashmir Walla, Fahad Shah, was arrested for uploading on social media “anti-national content to provoke the public to disturb law and order”. “I have granted him two days for appearance before the court,” magistrate Fida Mohammad Bhat said. A summons issued to Geelani said that on Feb…
WASHINGTON: The US National Archives retrieved multiple boxes of records — including “love letters” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that had been improperly removed from the White House, a report said on Monday. The documents and mementos — which also included correspondence from ex-US president Barack Obama — should have been turned over at the end of Trump’s term under the Presidential Records Act. But the agency did not get hold of them until last month, according to The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources. A former Trump aide quoted by the paper said they didn’t…
JERUSALEM: Three members of the United Arab Emirates’ Federal National Council visited Israel’s parliament on Monday, becoming the first Emirati delegation there since the US-brokered normalisation of ties in 2020. “When we talk about Abraham Accords agreements, we want you to look at the big picture,” Ali Rashid al-Nuaimi, chairman of the council’s defence, interior and foreign affairs committee, said at the Israeli foreign and defence committee. “It’s not a political agreement only, it’s not an issue related to security and defence issue. No, it is an agent of change for the whole region,” Nuaimi said, advocating “full engagement in…
South Korea’s Hyundai Motor said on Tuesday it deeply regrets any offence caused to Indians by an “unauthorised” tweet from the account of its Pakistan partner that expressed solidarity for the people of Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK). “As a business policy, Hyundai Motor Company does not comment on political or religious issues in any specific region,” Hyundai said in a Twitter post. The company said its independently-owned distributor in Pakistan made “unauthorised” IoK-related social media posts from its accounts, and “misused the Hyundai brand identity”. “We deeply regret any offence caused to the people of India by this unofficial social media…
Al Qaeda’s past ties to the recently empowered Taliban have the potential of making Afghanistan a safe haven for extremists, and “terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there than at any time in recent history”, UN experts said in a report circulated on Monday. In the wide-ranging report, the experts also said extremists linked to both Al Qaeda and the militant Islamic State (IS) group are successfully advancing in Africa, especially in the turbulent Sahel. And they said IS continues to operate “as an entrenched rural insurgency” in Iraq and Syria, where its so-called caliphate ruled a significant swathe of the two countries…
LAHORE: Fiction writer and former lawmaker Bushra Rehman passed away here on Monday. Funeral prayers for her were offered in Garden Town. She was unwell for the last one month after suffering from the Covid-19, as per some media reports. Bushra Rehman was born in Bahawalpur in 1944. She did her MA Journalism from the Punjab University. She was elected to the Punjab Assembly on a reserved seat for women in 1985 and then the 1990 elections. She served as an MNA on a seat reserved for women in 2002 and 2008. Besides being a lawmaker, Rehman was also a…
LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday dismissed for non-prosecution a writ petition seeking a ban on online game PUBG in Pakistan in the wake of incidents of violence and killings committed by young players of the game. It was second hearing of the petition when neither the petitioner nor his counsel appeared before the court. Resultantly, Justice Shams Mahmood Mirza dismissed the petition for non-prosecution. Tanvir Sarwar, a citizen, filed the petition through his counsel, Nadeem Sarwar, saying that online games had become a trend among the young generation. He pointed out that the World Health Organisation (WHO)…
