Category: WORLD NEWS

Braced for an all-out Russian assault in the east, Ukraine vowed to “fight absolutely to the end in strategically vital Mariupol, where the ruined port city’s last known pocket of resistance was holed up in a sprawling steel plant laced with tunnels. With missiles and rockets also battering other parts of the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russian soldiers of carrying out torture and kidnappings in areas they control. The fall of Mariupol, which has been reduced to rubble in a seven-week siege, would give Moscow its biggest victory…

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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations accused Russia on Thursday of making the precarious food situation in Yemen and elsewhere even worse by invading Ukraine, calling it just another grim example of the ripple effect Russia’s unprovoked, unjust, unconscionable war is having on the world’s most vulnerable. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told a U.N. Security Council meeting on war-torn Yemen that the World Food Program identified the Arab world’s poorest nation as one of the countries most affected by wheat price increases and lack of imports from Ukraine. Russia’s deputy U.N.…

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India and the US are restarting their bilateral commercial dialogue and the CEO’s forum later this year to deepen their bilateral trade and investment relationship, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced. Blinken made this announcement at a joint news conference with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin along with their Indian counterparts –External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh after the 2+2 Ministerial here on Monday. During the 2+2 Ministerial, the two sides discussed their goal of driving inclusive economic growth in the two countries and across…

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Shehbaz Sharif, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president, was elected unopposed as the new Prime Minister of Pakistan by Parliament on Monday after rival candidate Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party will boycott the voting and staged a walkout. Shehbaz, 70, was the only candidate left in the race after Qureshi’s boycott of the election in the National Assembly. In the House of 342, the winning candidate should get support of at least 172 lawmakers. Shehbaz, the younger brother of former three-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif, received…

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Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday resumed the crucial hearing on the dismissal of a no-confidence vote against embattled Prime Minister Imran Khan through a controversial ruling by the deputy speaker of the National Assembly and the subsequent dissolution of Parliament by the president. A five-member bench, headed by Chief Justice Umar Ata Bandial and comprising Justice Ijazul Ahsan, Justice Mazhar Alam Khan Miankhel, Justice Munib Akhtar and Justice Jamal Khan Mandokhel took up the case in the morning. Bandial questioned President Arif Alvi’s lawyer, Senator Ali Zafar, where the constitutional…

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Confronting the pandemic’s lasting shadow, President Joe Biden has ordered a new national research push on long COVID, while also directing federal agencies to support patients dealing with the mysterious and debilitating condition. Biden assigned the Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday to coordinate an urgent new initiative across federal agencies, building on research already under way at the National Institutes of Health. He also directed federal agencies to support patients and doctors by providing science-based best practices for treating long COVID, maintaining access to insurance coverage, and protecting…

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The White House has reiterated that it is not in India’s interest to “accelerate or increase” imports of Russian energy and other commodities, while offering to work with New Delhi to help it reduce its reliance on imports from Moscow. Responding to questions on the visit of top Indian-American US advisor Daleep Singh to New Delhi last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at her daily news conference on Monday that he explained both the mechanisms of the American sanctions and reiterated that any country or entity…

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Imran Khan will continue to be the Prime Minister of Pakistan until the appointment of a caretaker premier, according to a notification issued by President Arif Alvi on Monday. The incumbent Prime Minister shall continue to hold office till appointment of the caretaker premier, the notification said. President Alvi has also written a letter to Prime Minister Khan and Leader of the Opposition in the outgoing National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif, asking them to propose names of suitable persons for appointment as the caretaker premier, the Dawn newspaper reported. The letter…

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Ukrainian troops moved cautiously to retake territory north of the country’s capital on Saturday, using cables to pull the bodies of civilians off the streets in one town out of fear that Russian forces might have booby-trapped them before leaving. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his nightly video address hours earlier that departing Russian troops were creating a catastrophic” situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and even the bodies of those killed.” Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, watched Saturday as…

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 Pakistan’s embattled Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday summoned a meeting of the National Security Committee (NSC), the highest forum for discussion on security issues, a day after he effectively lost majority in Parliament after a key partner of the ruling coalition joined the ranks of the Opposition which had tabled a no-confidence motion against his government. The NSC meeting will be held at the Prime Minister’s House, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry tweeted. The NSC is chaired by the Prime Minister and attended by services chiefs, key ministers, national security…

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