US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was convicted by a jury on Tuesday of lying about his drug use to illegally buy a gun, a verdict Democrats may seize upon to counter Donald Trump’s claim of a justice system weaponised against him. A 12-member jury in Wilmington, Delaware, federal court found the defendant guilty on all three counts against him, making Hunter the first child of a sitting US president to be convicted of a crime. Hunter, 54, lightly nodded his head after the verdict was read but otherwise showed little reaction. He then patted his lawyer Abbe Lowell on the…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
SWEIMEH: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken thanked Indonesia’s incoming president, Prabowo Subianto, for offering assistance in crisis-hit Gaza during their meeting on Tuesday at an aid conference in Jordan. The president-elect of the world’s largest Muslim-majority country has pledged to send peacekeeping forces if a UN-backed ceasefire is in place and to increase medical aid immediately. Blinken congratulated Prabowo, now Indonesia’s defence minister, on his election and discussed how the US-led ceasefire initiative “would benefit both Israelis and Palestinians”, said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. Blinken “thanked the defence minister for Indonesia’s support for the proposal to achieve an…
SEOUL: South Korean troops fired warning shots after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the border this week, Seoul’s military said on Tuesday, with tensions high over Pyongyang’s barrage of trash-carrying balloons and the South’s retaliatory loudspeaker campaign. The Sunday incursion over the line that separates the two militaries took place in an overgrown area of the heavily fortified border area and was likely accidental, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Relations between the two Koreas — technically still at war as the 1950-1953 conflict ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty — are at one of their lowest…
LILONGWE: Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima was killed in a plane crash, the nation’s president said on Tuesday, after searchers located the wreckage of the aircraft in a mist-shrouded forest. The military plane carrying Chilima, 51, and nine others disappeared on Monday, after it failed to land in the northern city of Mzuzu due to bad weather and was told to return to the capital, Lilongwe. Photographs shared by a member of the military rescue team showed army personnel standing on a foggy slope near debris bearing the registration number of the Dornier 228-202K aircraft operated by the Malawi Army…
BEIJING: Four American instructors from a small Iowa university were wounded in a stabbing attack in a public park in northeast China’s Jilin province on Monday, prompting an investigation into the attacker’s motive, Chinese officials said. The alleged assaults occurred shortly before noon on Monday at a park in Jilin City, police said. A 55-year-old local man, identified only by his surname Cui, was detained the same day. “Cui collided into a foreigner while walking in Beishan Park, and then stabbed the foreigner and three fellow foreigners with a knife, as well as a Chinese tourist who tried to stop…
DUBAI: A boat carrying more than 200 migrants sank off Yemen, leaving at least 49 dead, mostly women and children, in the latest disaster on the perilous migration route from Africa, a UN agency said on Tuesday. “At least 49 migrants have died and 140 others remain missing after a boat” carrying 260 people capsized off the southern province of Shabwah on Monday, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said. It said 31 women and six children were among those confirmed dead, adding that 115 Somali nationals and 145 Ethiopians were initially on board the vessel before it sank. “Search…
Cairo/Tel Aviv: Hamas accepts a UN resolution backing a plan to end the Israeli aggression in Gaza and is ready to negotiate details, a senior official of the group said on Tuesday in what the US Secretary of State called a hopeful sign. But Qatari and Egyptian mediators have not received formal replies from Hamas or Israel to the UN-backed truce proposal, an official close to the talks said, and both sides suggested on Tuesday the plan fit their clashing goals, raising doubt whether any genuine headway towards a deal had been made. Discussions also touching on post-war plans for Gaza will continue…
Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have flocked to the Saudi holy city of Makkah for the Haj pilgrimage unfolding this year in the shadow of the Gaza conflict. One of the world’s largest annual religious gatherings officially begins on Friday, and Saudi officials are trying to keep the focus on prayers. The Gulf kingdom’s minister in charge of religious pilgrimages, Tawfiq al-Rabiah, warned last week that “no political activity” will be tolerated. The Haj, one of the five pillars of Islam, must be performed at least once by all Muslims with the means, and as of Wednesday around 1.2 million…
ISLAMABAD: The government and the opposition traded barbs on Tuesday in the Senate over distribution of standing committees, with the opposition threatening to boycott the committees and the government insisting that the committees would function even without the opposition. As the house met here hours after election of Senators Saleem Mandviwala and Quratulain Marri, both from the PPP, as chairpersons of the standing committees on finance and revenue, and planning and development, respectively, PTI parliamentary leader in the house objected to what he called deviation from the parliamentary tradition of the opposition getting the committees having something to do with the…
ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday suspended the decision of the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) to transfer election petitions related to the federal capital, from an IHC bench to a tribunal led by a retired judge. Chief Justice Aamar Farooq, while hearing the petitions of the PTI runner-up candidates from Islamabad — Shoaib Shaheen, Mohammad Ali Bukhari, and Amir Mughal — issued a stay order against the decision. The PTI leaders challenged the proceedings of the ECP on the applications of three MNAs of the PML-N seeking the transfer of the election petitions from the tribunal presided over by Justice Tariq…
