Category: WORLD NEWS

Israeli cybersecurity company NSO Group, which is at the centre of the Pegasus snooping scandal, has temporarily blocked several government clients around the world from using its spyware technology as the firm probes its alleged abuses, according to a US media report. The alleged use of the Pegasus software to spy on journalists, human rights defenders, politicians and others in a number of countries, including India, triggered concerns over issues relating to privacy. The suspensions are in response to an investigation by the Pegasus Project, a consortium of media outlets…

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 President Joe Biden said Monday the U.S. combat mission in Iraq will conclude by the end of the year, an announcement that reflects the reality on the ground more than a major shift in U.S. policy. Even before Biden took office, the main U.S. focus has been assisting Iraqi forces, not fighting on their behalf. And Biden did not say if he planned to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, now about 2,500. The announcement comes on the heels of Biden’s decision to withdraw fully from Afghanistan nearly 20…

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Chaos and confusion over travel rules and measures to contain new virus outbreaks are contributing to another cruel summer for Europe’s battered tourism industry. Popular destination countries are grappling with surging COVID-19 variants, but the patchwork and last-minute nature of the efforts as the peak season gets underway threatens to derail another summer. In France, the world’s most visited country, visitors to cultural and tourist sites were confronted this week with a new requirement for a special COVID-19 pass. To get the pass, which comes in paper or digital form,…

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken will raise issues of human rights and democracy with Indian officials during his first visit to New Delhi as the two nations have more values in common on those fronts than otherwise, according to a senior US official. Blinken is scheduled to arrive in New Delhi late on July 27. During his stay in the country, he will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. The Ministry of External Affairs said in New Delhi that National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will…

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The US carried out airstrikes across Afghanistan in the last several days as part of an effort to support the Afghan security forces fighting Taliban insurgents, the Pentagon has said. The news of US airstrikes in Afghanistan came a day after America’s most senior military officer admitted that the Taliban had gained strategic momentum, with their forces now controlling about half of Afghanistan’s more than 400 district centres. The Pentagon, however, refrained from giving any specifics of its airstrikes in Afghanistan. Without speaking to specifics, I can say that in…

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Tense post-Brexit relations between Britain and the European Union face further strain on Wednesday, when the UK calls for major changes to trade rules agreed on by both sides. Brexit minister David Frost will set out proposals for smoothing out trade arrangements for Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK that has a land border with the 27-nation bloc. The divorce deal agreed before Britain’s departure means customs and border checks must be conducted on some goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. The regulations…

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President Joe Biden has said that even though the United States has seen a dramatic drop in the number of COVID-19 deaths due to its vaccination programme, the people must remain vigilant about the more virulent Delta variant that is spreading fast in the country. Stressing the need for people to get vaccinated, he said “virtually all” of the Covid deaths and hospitalisations in the country are among the unvaccinated. The highly contagious Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2, was first detected in India in December and is spreading quickly…

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 The world needs to see that Japan can stage a safe Olympics, the country’s prime minister told sports officials Tuesday ahead of the Tokyo Games. Tens of thousands of athletes, officials, games staff and media are arriving in Japan amid a local state of emergency and widespread opposition from the general public. Events start Wednesday in softball and women’s soccer two days ahead of the formal opening ceremony of an Olympics already postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. “The world is faced with great difficulties,” Japanese Prime Minister…

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An investigation by a global media consortium based on leaked targeting data provides further evidence that military-grade malware from Israel-based NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire outfit, is being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents. From a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organisations, journalists were able to identify more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries who were allegedly selected by NSO clients…

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