BRUSSELS: The European Union admitted on Tuesday to a “difficult situation” after a journalism consortium said Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania were dumping migrants in the desert, using the bloc’s funds. The wide-ranging investigation by Lighthouse Reports with outlets including Le Monde and The Washington Post paints the EU as complicit in a “system of mass displacement” and serious rights abuses. “Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU,” a report said. Such operations, it said,…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
PUERTO AYORA: Just as Charles Darwin had done in the year 1831, a group of scientists and environmentalists set sail (last year) from the English port of Plymouth and headed for the Galapagos islands off the coast of Ecuador. However, what they found upon arriving (last month), ‘differed vastly’ from what naturalist Darwin witnessed whilst visiting the archipelago in the year 1835. This trip had played a key role in developing his ‘world-changing theory’ on ‘natural selection’. Presently, the Galapagos is under protection as part of a marine reserve and is classified as a ‘World Heritage Site’. Yet the area…
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken faced criticism from the right and left over Israel policy in Congress on Tuesday, with Republicans accusing the Biden administration of failing Israel and Democrats saying it’s doing too little to help civilians in Gaza. Furious protesters interrupted Blinken as he began his testimony before the Democratic-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There were shouts that he has “blood on his hands,” and Blinken flinched from a protester who approached him from behind waving a sign that said “criminal” before security officers carried her out of the room. Blinken reiterated the support of President…
BANGKOK: Two statues smuggled out of Thailand, including a 900-year-old sculpture that spent three decades at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, were welcomed back to the kingdom in an official repatriation ceremony in Bangkok on Tuesday. A 129-centimetre statue of Shiva, dubbed “Golden Boy”, was repatriated after being linked to British-Thai art dealer Douglas Latchford, who was charged with trafficking looted relics from Cambodia and Thailand shortly before he died in 2020. The statue, displayed in the Met from 1988 to 2023, was discovered near the Cambodian border during an archaeological dig at Prasat Ban Yang ruins…
KARACHI: Palestinian journalists covering the war in Gaza have been awarded the 2024 World Press Freedom Hero award. The award has been given to a group of journalists for the first time, according to a statement released by the awarding body. The list included Al Jazeera Arabic’s Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, whose wife, son, daughter and grandson were killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023. The award also paid tribute to Bilal Jadallah, often referred to as the “father figure” of journalism in Gaza. He, too, was killed by Israeli shelling in November 2023. The award, jointly presented by the…
BANGKOK: One person died and more than 70 were injured on Tuesday when a Singapore Airlines flight from London hit severe turbulence and was forced to make an emergency landing in Bangkok. Flight tracking data suggested the plane dropped more than 1,800 metres (6,000 feet) in just five minutes, causing multiple head injuries to those on board. It is the latest drama involving a Boeing plane, after a fuselage panel blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX in January as well as two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019. Singapore Airlines said flight SQ321 took off from London’s Heathrow…
FRANKFURT: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that the United States and Europe needed to respond to China’s industrial overcapacity in a “strategic and united way” to keep manufacturers viable on both sides of the Atlantic. Yellen told reporters during a visit to Frankfurt that G7 finance ministers shared US concerns about Chinese efforts to dominate clean energy industries, but did not need “detailed coordination” on trade actions following the imposition of steep US tariffs on Chinese goods. “But I do think that the concerns about China’s strategy are shared and all I’m suggesting is that given that…
GAZA: Israeli forces thrust deeper into the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza on Tuesday, laying waste to residential districts with tank and air bombardments, residents said, while airstrikes killed at least five people in the southern city of Rafah. The Israeli army used bulldozers to clear shops and property near the local market in Jabalia refugee camp, residents said, in a military operation that began almost two weeks ago. Israel said it has returned to the camp, where it had asserted to have dismantled Hamas months ago, to prevent the group from regrouping. Health authorities and Gaza Civil Emergency Service…
Tens of thousands of Iranians flocked to the streets of Tehran Wednesday to join the funeral processions of president Ebrahim Raisi and his entourage, who died in a helicopter crash on Sunday. In the centre of the city, people holding portraits of Raisi gathered in and around the University of Tehran, where Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is due to lead prayers for Raisi and his companions, including foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Raisi’s helicopter crashed Sunday on a fog-shrouded mountainside in northern Iran on the way to the city of Tabriz after the group attended the inauguration of a dam project…
ISLAMABAD: The medical reimbursement limit on treatment of capital police personnel from private hospitals has conditionally been increased by 100 per cent. Besides, a committee has been constituted to consider the cases of medial reimbursement beyond the limit. The police said earlier the medical reimbursement limit for treatment from private hospital was Rs250,000 which has now been increased to Rs500,000. The reimbursement limit was increased under the directives of Inspector General of Police Syed Ali Nasir Rizvi, the police said, adding the IGP also constituted a committee to consider the cases of medical reimbursement beyond the limit. In this regard,…
