JERUSALEM: Israeli protesters blocked aid trucks headed for Gaza on Monday, strewing food packages on the road in the latest in a series of incidents that have come as Israel has pledged to allow uninterrupted humanitarian supplies into the besieged enclave. Four protesters, including a minor, were arrested at the protest, at Tarqumiya checkpoint, west of Hebron in the Israeli occupied West Bank, according to a statement from lawyers representing the protesters. Videos circulated on social media showed protesters throwing supplies from the trucks onto the ground, with the contents of opened cartons lying spilled across the road. “The aid…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
ASTANA: A former minister of the economy from Kazakhstan has been sentenced to 24 years in prison. He has been charged with the murder of his wife after the conclusion of a widely watched trial. Certain individuals perceived the trial as ‘a litmus test’ of the president’s promise to improve women’s rights. Kuandyk Bishimbayev, 44, was found guilty of torture and murder by the court. His trial has been broadcast live over the past seven weeks and has been widely regarded as an attempt by the authorities to send a message that ‘members of the elite are no longer above…
AL MAWASI: Pupils sitting with their legs crossed in the sand, take classes inside a tent, near the city of Khan Yunis, in Gaza. Two sisters connect online to a West Bank school from Cairo. A professor in Germany helps Palestinian students link up with European universities. After witnessing their schools and universities being forced to close, being damaged and/or destroyed, in more than seven months of war, Gazans sheltering inside and outside the territory are doing whatever they can, in order to resume ‘learning’. “We are receiving students, and we have a very large number of them still waiting”…
FAIZABAD (Badakhshan): Clashes broke out on Monday between Taliban forces tasked with clearing poppy crops and farmers in Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province, residents said. Poppy cultivators threw rocks and demanded Taliban security units not destroy their crops, said Jamaluddin, a resident of Barlas Shalmar village in the Argo district of Badakhshan whose name has been changed for security reasons. In response, Taliban authorities fired their guns to disperse villagers, Jamaluddin, who witnessed the incident, said. A nurse at a medical facility in Argo said the clinic received “two dead and nine wounded people” from the Barlas area — a string…
WASHINGTON: US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday that President Joe Biden’s administration did not view the killings of Palestinians in Gaza by Israel as genocide. Sullivan, speaking to reporters at the White House, said the United States wants to see Hamas defeated, that Palestinians facing the brunt of Israeli onslaught were in “hell”, and that a major military operation by Israel in Rafah would be a mistake. “We do not believe what is happening in Gaza is a genocide. We have been firmly on record rejecting that proposition,” Sullivan said. Biden, who is running for re-election this…
LOS ANGELES: Melinda French Gates on Monday announced she was leaving the mega philanthropy foundation which she established with her ex-husband (the co-founder of Microsoft), Bill Gates. The resignation, which will come into effect on June 7, will leave Bill Gates as the sole chair of one of the world’s most influential and powerful non-governmental organisations. “After careful thought and reflection, I have decided to resign from my role as co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation” Melinda French Gates, wrote in a statement, shared on social media. The statement gave no reason for her departure. It however did…
DUBAI: The death toll from Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since Oct7 has crossed 35,000, according to the health ministry, as Israel’s forces pushed further into north and south corners of the besieged enclave for fresh assault. In a statement on Monday, the Gaza health ministry put the death toll at 35,091, with 57 killed in the past 24 hours. Israeli forces pushed deep into the ruins of Gaza’s northern edge on Monday to recapture an area where they claimed to have dismantled Hamas months ago, while in the south, tanks and troops pushed across a highway into Rafah. Israeli…
Cheering crowds greeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday as he submitted his candidacy for a Hindu holy city’s parliamentary seat in a general election his party is strongly favoured to win. Modi remains roundly popular in India, in large part due to his cultivated image as an aggressive champion of the country’s majority faith. Varanasi is the spiritual capital of Hinduism, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges river, and the premier has represented the city since sweeping to power a decade ago. “I swear on God… I will have faith…
The United States must move on from the “trauma” of two decades of war and step up counterterrorism efforts to face growing threats from Afghanistan and Pakistan, a study said on Tuesday. The group, led by former senior US policymakers, made clear it was not advocating a return to America’s longest war which ended when President Joe Biden pulled troops from Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban regained control. But it said that, after the overwhelming focus on counterterrorism following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the pendulum “appears to have swung in the opposite direction” as the United States focuses on competition with…
ISLAMABAD: Tensions between the judiciary and the legal fraternity are likely to escalate as a nationwide strike by lawyers continues, with senior counsel Naeem Bukhari accusing the Islamabad High Court Bar Association (IHCBA) president of restraining lawyers from entering the court premises. On Monday, Mr Bukhari filed an application in the Islamabad High Court, alleging that the IHCBA President Riasat Ali Azad had “physically restrained” his lawyer from entering the court premises. Due to non-appearance of the lawyer, Justice Babar Sattar had dismissed Mr Bukhari’s petition concerning his dispute with the government over a matter related to Gun and Country…
