15-12-2023 Bureau Report + Agencies MELBOURNE: Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja says he will “fight” the decision to bar him from making an on-field statement in support of Palestinians. The batter had planned to wear shoes bearing the words “all lives are equal” and “freedom is a human right” at a …

15-12-2023 PARIS: The world has turned topsy-turvy, say angry French farmers, and here are the signs to prove it. Motorists in rural France have recently been astonished to see thousands of road signs at entrances to towns and villages turned upside-down. The name-bearing roadside plaques have been unscrewed, flipped, then …

15-12-2023 Bureau Report + Agencies SYDNEY: A woman once branded “Australia’s worst mother” has had her convictions for killing her four children quashed. The New South Wales Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the evidence originally used to jail Kathleen Folbigg was “not reliable”. The 56-year-old was pardoned and freed …

15-12-2023 WEST BANK: Since the war in Gaza began, Israel’s military operations in the occupied West Bank have become more frequent, and more forceful. The northern city of Jenin, the epicentre of these raids before the Hamas attacks is now a weekly battleground. The Palestinian teenagers I met who were …

15-12-2023 ANTARCTICA’S COASTLINE: Scientists now have good numbers to describe the true scale of the world’s biggest iceberg, A23a. Satellite measurements show the frozen block has a total average thickness of just over 280m (920ft). Combined with its known area of 3,900 sq. km (1,500 sq. miles), this gives a …

15-12-2023 WASHINGTON: The US House of Representatives has voted to formalize its impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Lawmakers voted along party lines to back a resolution that Republicans say will give them more power to gather evidence and enforce legal demands. Three Republican-led House committees allege bribery and corruption …

14-12-2023 RAFAH/ GAZA CITY: Strong wind and heavy rain in Gaza overnight on Wednesday brought even worse misery to displaced families, tearing and flooding flimsy tents, drenching clothes and blankets and making everyone cold. At a tent camp in Rafah, located on sandy terrain strewn with rubbish, people were trying …

14-12-2023 JEDDAH/ NEW DELHI: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Wednesday expressed concern over the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict upholding India’s revocation of Article 370 that guaranteed special status to the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). Earlier this week on December 11, the top Indian court ruled that …

14-12-2023 BEIJING/ HANOI: China and Vietnam agreed to step up co-operation on security matters in their move towards becoming a community with a “shared future”, they said on Wednesday, as Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up a visit to Hanoi. On Xi’s two-day trip, the Communist-ruled neighbors, close in economic …

14-12-2023 LONDON: At -49, the British Prime Minister’s net favorability rating is comparable to that Boris Johnson’s at the time of his resignation while Rishi Sunak will be breathing a sigh of relief that he managed to pass his flagship Rwanda bill through the Commons last night in the face …