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19-03-2026 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: Indian technology stocks have seen an unprecedented rout over the past few weeks over fears of artificial intelligence upending the traditional outsourcing model that powers the country’s $300bn (£223bn) back-office industry. The sell-off, part of a global correction in traditional software and IT stocks, preceded …

19-03-2026 WASHINGTON/ BEIJING: US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is planning to delay a high stakes visit to China later in March by about a month because of the Iran war. “We’ve requested that we delay it a month or so,” he told reporters at the White …

19-03-2026 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report ISLAMABAD/ KABUL: Families have gathered outside a drug treatment centre in the Afghan capital, Kabul, looking for their loved ones after it was hit in a Pakistani air strike, which Taliban authorities said killed 408 people. The attack on Kabul’s Omar Addiction Treatment …

19-03-2026 LONDON/ NEW YORK: Ties between the US tech giant Palantir and the United Kingdom government are coming under increased scrutiny following the arrest of former UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson over his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Palantir, which was a client of …

18-03-2026 TEHRAN: Israel’s killing of Ali Larijani, the powerful secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, will not deal a fatal blow to Iran’s leadership, the country’s foreign minister said. In an interview, aired after the killing of Larijani was confirmed by Tehran early on Wednesday, Iranian Minister of Foreign …

18-03-2026 PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: US President Donald Trump threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub Kharg Island and said he was not ready for a deal with Tehran to end the war which has shut off the vital Strait of Hormuz and caused chaos in global energy markets. …

18-03-2026 BEIRUT/ SIDON: Hussain Murtada and his family are camping in the back of a small truck, a flimsy tarpaulin shielding them from a storm on Sunday, with no room left at shelters for displaced people in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. “We are putting tarp ‌over it because …

18-03-2026 PARIS: French anti-terror prosecutors have opened an investigation into two brothers suspected of plotting a “lethal and anti-Semitic” attack. They say the men described as Moroccan-Italian nationals aged 20 and 22 were picked up last week in a car in northern France. Officers found a loaded semi-automatic weapon, a …

18-03-2026 KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused European allies of seeking to “blackmail” Kyiv into reopening a pipeline transporting Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. He said restoring the flow of Russian crude oil through Ukraine into the European Union (EU) would be like lifting economic sanctions on Moscow. …

18-03-2026 GAZA STRIP/ RAMALLAHL: Israeli forces killed 16 Palestinians in the ​Gaza Strip and the West Bank, health officials said, in one of the heaviest death tolls in a single day ‌in weeks, as Israel continued to launch attacks on Lebanon and Iran. Medics and the interior ministry of the …