International

30-06-2021 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI: When student activists Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal walked out of Delhi’s Tihar jail recently, it was obvious their 13-month stint in prison had failed to dim their morale. With wide smiles and fists raised in defiance, the founders of Pinjra Tod (Break …

30-06-2021 Bureau Report CANBERRA/ BEIJING: Chinese pro-democracy students in Australia fear punishment for their family back home if they speak out on sensitive issues, a new report says. Human Right Watch found such students feel surveilled in Australia, leading many to self-censor in classrooms. Academics teaching China courses in the country …

30-06-2021 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI/ LONDON: India has classified a new variant of the coronavirus first identified in Europe as a “variant of concern”, but it’s too early to tell whether it poses a significant threat. India’s health ministry says studies showed that the so-called Delta plus variant …

30-06-2021 Bureau Report + Agencies ABU DHABI: Israel’s top diplomat Yair Lapid opened the Jewish state’s first embassy in the Gulf during a trip to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday after ties were normalized ties last year. “The opening of the Israeli Embassy in Abu Dhabi with the Emirati …

30-06-2021 VANCOUVER: At least 69 people in the Vancouver area have died in a record-smashing heat wave engulfing western Canada and the US Pacific Northwest, police said Tuesday. Most of the dead in the Vancouver suburbs of Burnaby and Surrey over the past 24 hours were elderly or people with …

30-06-2021 Bureau Report KABUL/ ISLAMABAD: Taliban fighters have launched an attack on Ghazni, clashing with Afghan forces and using explosives in an attempt to seize the central Afghan city, local officials have said. Tuesday’s assault on Ghazni, on the highway linking the capital Kabul with the southern province of Kandahar, …

29-06-2021 BRITISH COLUMBIA: British Columbia closed schools, issued flood warnings from glacier melts, and urged people to stay indoors because of extreme heat that pushed temperatures in the western Canadian province to a national record. Social media posts with tips on staying cool without air conditioners went viral on Monday …

29-06-2021 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: A Hindu group has filed a complaint with police against Twitter’s country head for showing regions outside a map of India on its website, kickstarting an investigation in a fresh headache for the United States-based social media firm. A map on Twitter’s careers page showed …

29-06-2021 GAZA CITY/ JERUSALEM: Violence erupted after the demolition of a Palestinian business by Israeli forces began in the al-Bustan area of the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Tuesday. Israeli forces accompanied by bulldozers entered the Palestinian neighborhood and destroyed a butcher’s shop in Silwan. Soldiers used tear …

28-06-2021 PYONGYANG/ SEOUL: Everyone in North Korea is heartbroken over leader Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, said an unidentified resident of Pyongyang quoted on the country’s tightly controlled state media, after watching recent video footage of Kim. The rare public comment on Kim’s health come after foreign analysts noted …