International

20-01-2023 PARIS: President Macron’s reform program faces a make-or-break moment, as French unions stage a day of mass strikes and protests on Thursday against his plans to push back the age of retirement. A new bill due to go through parliament will raise the official age at which people can …

20-01-2023 KYIV/ BERLIN: Ukraine pleaded on Thursday for the West to finally send it heavy tanks as the defence chiefs of the United States and Germany headed for a showdown over weapons Kyiv says could decide the fate of the war. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Germany on …

20-01-2023 JERUSALEM/ RAMALLAH/ OCCUPIED WEST BANK: The second longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, Maher Younis, has been released after serving four decades in Israeli prisons. Maher, 65, was released from Eshel prison near Beer Sabe’ (Beer Sheva) in southern Israel just before 7am (04:00 GMT) on Thursday. He was arrested in 1983 …

20-01-2023 WASHINGTON: US authorities said on Wednesday that they had arrested the owner of China-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato for alleged money laundering, hailing the move as a global “blow to the crypto crime ecosystem.” Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian living in Shenzhen, China, was held in Miami overnight and was …

20-01-2023 UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations has issued a statement expressing “concern” after Guatemala announced it would investigate a former anti-corruption investigator assigned to the country. Ivan Velasquez, a Colombian who led the UN’s anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala from 2013 to 2019, is under investigation for “illegal, arbitrary and abusive …

20-01-2023 NEW YORK/ LONDON: New data has revealed that temperatures in Greenland are the warmest they have been in 1,000 years, underscoring the growing impact of human-driven climate change on the natural world. A study published in the scientific journal Nature on Wednesday found that temperatures have risen 1.5 degrees …

20-01-2023 BEIJING: Chinese drugmakers rushed to make anti-fever medicines and other treatments for COVID-19 on Thursday, after President Xi Jinping said he was worried about an influx of holiday travellers to rural areas ill-equipped to deal with sudden outbreaks. Xi’s comments come just over a month after his government abruptly …

19-01-2023 Bureau Report WELLINGTON/ MELBOURNE: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Thursday made a shock announcement she had “no more in the tank” to continue leading the country and would step down no later than early February and not seek re-election. Ardern, holding back tears, said that it had …

19-01-2023 WASHINGTON/ AZAT: Dozens men have been killed and three injured in a fire that broke at a military unit in Azat village in Armenia’s eastern province of Gegharkunik. “According to preliminary data, 15 servicemen were killed as a result of the fire that broke out in the barracks of …

19-01-2023 Bureau Report + Agencies CANBERRA: Australia has announced it will ditch its fleet of European-designed Taipan military helicopters a decade earlier than scheduled, replacing them with 40 Black Hawk choppers from the United States at an estimated cost of 2.8 billion Australian dollars ($1.97bn). US manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corp’s …