09-02-2023 WASHINGTON/ BEIJING: The United States held briefings in Washington and Beijing with foreign diplomats from 40 nations about the Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace in late January, a senior administration official and diplomats said on Tuesday. US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman briefed nearly 150 foreign …

09-02-2023 PARIS/ LONDON: More than 50 encoded letters sent by Mary Queen of Scots in the 16th Century have been found and deciphered by an international team of cryptographers. The letters, written during her English captivity, were found in a trawl of online archives at the National Library of France. …

09-02-2023 WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s navy has intercepted a floating haul of cocaine in the Pacific Ocean in what the country says is its largest drug bust ever. The stash – weighing total 3.2 tonnes (3,200kg) and worth NZ$500m (£263m; $316m) was found drifting hundreds of kilometres northwest of New Zealand. …

09-02-2023 WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden challenged Republicans to lift the US debt ceiling and support tax policies that were friendlier to middle class Americans on Tuesday in a State of the Union speech that served as a blueprint for his 2024 re-election campaign. Assailing oil companies for making high profits …

09-02-2023 ISTANBUL: As he waited for a delayed flight out of Istanbul Airport this week, Samet Yilmaz held up his phone, pointing to a photo of rubble. He said his brother, Ismail, was buried beneath it. Samet lives in Bahrain, but has joined scores of people making the journey to …

09-02-2023 NEW YORK: A Pakistan-American officer of New York police, who was shot in the head Saturday while off duty has died, the city’s police commissioner said Tuesday night. The officer, Adeed Fayaz, 26, a five-year veteran of the New York Police Department (NYPD), had been hospitalized in Brooklyn for …

09-02-2023 COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s economy is expected to grow again from the end of this year and the government hopes to extricate the country from its economic crisis by 2026, President Ranil Wickremesinghe told parliament on Wednesday. The Indian Ocean Island of 22 million people has been struggling with its …

09-02-2023 KAHRAMANMARAS/ ANTAKYA: Families in southern Turkey and Syria spent a second night in the freezing cold on Wednesday as overwhelmed rescuers raced to pull people from the rubble two days after a massive earthquake that killed more than 11,000 people. In Turkey, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets …

08-02-2023 Bureau Report + BBC NEW DELHI: A pregnancy photoshoot by an Indian transgender couple who paused their hormone therapy to have a baby is being widely shared on social media. Ziya Paval, 21, and her partner Zahad, 23, who live in the southern state of Kerala, were in the …

08-02-2023 PARIS: Plane maker Boeing plans to cut about 2,000 jobs in finance and human resources this year, as it focuses on engineering and manufacturing. The move comes as the company puts more of its resources into “products, services and technology development”. It will outsource some of the roles to …