TUNIS: Tunisian authorities expelled hundreds of sub-Saharan asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees from encampments in the capital Tunis, a non-governmental organisation said. Makeshift settlements in Tunis, including near the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), were destroyed as the migrants were “deported to the Algerian border”, said the Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights (FTDES). “At least 300 migrants, including refugees and asylum-seekers, as well as women and children, were forcibly evacuated overnight,” said FTDES spokesman Romdhane Ben Amor. Up to 700 sub-Saharan migrants had set up makeshift encampments in an area north of the Gulf of Tunis, in the past…
Author: Hasnain Abid Khanzada
NAIROBI: About 1,000 refugees have fled a UN-run camp in northern Ethiopia after reports of armed robbery, shootings and alleged abductions, the United Nations said on Friday. The UN’s refugee agency UNHCR said the refugees, from war-torn Sudan and also Eritrea, left the Awlala settlement in the Amhara region earlier this week “primarily because they did not feel safe”. “This follows several reports of security incidents, including crime, theft, armed robbery, shooting and alleged abductions,” a UNHCR spokesperson said in Nairobi, adding that the refugees also wanted services there to be improved. The Awlala camp lies about 70 kilometres from…
LONDON: Britain’s opposition Labour Party won a parliamentary seat in northern England on Friday and control of several councils, inflicting heavy losses on the governing Conservatives to pile more pressure on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to hold an early general election. The thumping victory set the tone for what will be a closely watched two days of local results before the national election this year, which polling shows could put Labour leader Keir Starmer in power and end 14 years of Conservative government. While suffering what were expected losses, the Conservative Ben Houchen won re-election as the mayor of the…
UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has urged the UN General Assembly and the Security Council to address India’s new strategy of conducting cross-border assassinations. During a General Assembly debate on the “Culture of Peace” on Thursday evening, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram highlighted that India was also targeting Muslims, Christians, and other minorities within its borders. He stressed that India’s extraterritorial state terrorism was not confined to Pakistan and it was extending to targeting of political opponents in Canada and the United States and potentially other nations as well. Ambassador Akram also referenced a recent Washington Post report, which quoted Prime Minister Narendra…
KATHMANDU: Internet providers in Nepal cautioned on Friday that the Himalayan republic is faced with widespread outages. They raised alarm bells on Friday over overdue payments to Indian enterprises, a day after service disruptions affected the daily lives of millions of people. Numerous private internet companies witnessed their customers being ‘forced offline’ on Thursday night, when their upstream partners in neighboring India severed connections. According to the Internet Service Providers Association of Nepal (ISPAN), non-payment of dues was the reason behind the outage. Data from internet outage monitor, ‘Netblocks’ depicted that 18 internet providers (based in Nepal) had their bandwidth…
WASHINGTON: Google and the US Justice Department locked horns in court on Friday, over claims that the Alphabet unit unlawfully schemed to dominate search advertising. This occured during closing arguments in a case that the government contends has the potential of shaping the future of the internet. District Judge in Washington, Amit Mehta grilled both sides with questions, probing whether competitive platforms such as ByteDances TikTok and Metas Facebook and Instagram, are indeed competitive substitutes for search advertising dollars. Mehta termed platform substitutability for advertisers ‘a central issue’ that the court must resolve. He now prepares to render a major…
THE HAGUE: International Criminal Court prosecutors warned on Friday against “individuals who threaten to retaliate” against the tribunal or its staff, saying such actions might constitute an “offence against its administration of justice”. The ICC did not say if the comment related to its investigation into possible war crimes by Israel or Palestinian groups in Gaza and the West Bank. Media in the United States said this week the ICC might issue an arrest warrant for Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, and that the latter had urged President Joe Biden to prevent the court from doing so. On…
OTTAWA: Canadian police charged three people on Friday with the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in the province of British Columbia in June 2023, Canadian media said, citing court documents. Nijjar, 45, was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, a Vancouver suburb with a large Sikh population. The news broke days after the White House expressed concern about the reported role of the Indian intelligence service in assassination plots in Canada and the US. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced in September that Canadian authorities were pursuing allegations linking Indian government agents to the murder of Nijjar, a…
ISLAMABAD: British High Commissioner Jane Marriott on Friday said journalists worldwide were facing threats and challenges, stressing on the importance of free media in any society. She was speaking at the ‘Meet the Press’ programme at the National Press Club on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. Earlier, Ms Marriott was received by the club’s president, Azhar Jatoi, Secretary Nayyar Ali, Finance Secretary Waqar Ahmed Abbasi and members of the executive and governing body. Talking to members of the journalist community, the high commissioner said she was interested in journalism since childhood. “In the past I myself had been…
RAWALPINDI: The terror group which gunned down a Dolphin Force official and injured another one during an encounter with police last week on Murree Road was affiliated with banned outfit Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). However, they were neitherfoot soldiers nor were commanders of the TTP, said the sources. Police have have handed over the two suspects to the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) along with a mobile phone, some photographs, a copy of arms licence and treatment record of private hospital Peshawar Road recovered from the car. The car, in which the suspects were traveling, had also been shifted to the CTD.…
