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03-02-2023 OSLO: Police in Norway have banned a planned protest including the burning of a copy of the Islamic holy book, the Quran, hours after the Turkish foreign ministry summoned the Norwegian ambassador to complain. A group of protesters planned to burn a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish …

03-02-2023 PYONGYANG/ SEOUL: North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that drills by the United States and its allies have pushed the situation to an “extreme red-line” and threaten to turn the peninsula into a “huge war arsenal and a more critical war zone.” The statement, carried by state news …

03-02-2023 WASHINGTON: Kevin McCarthy is spearheading an effort to prevent Congresswoman Ilhan Omar from serving on the chamber’s Foreign Affairs Committee due to her prior criticism of Israel. This is one of his first actions as speaker of the US House of Representatives. The proposal to dismiss Omar from the …

02-02-2023 Bureau Report SYDNEY: Mourners and protesters faced off in Sydney on Thursday at the funeral service for Australian Cardinal George Pell, a former top Vatican official who was acquitted in 2020 of sexual abuse accusations. Australian police officials said they had dropped a court bid to block a protest …

02-02-2023 PARIS: French naval forces in January seized thousands of assault rifles, machineguns and anti-tank missiles headed from Iran to Yemen, officials have told the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press news agency, the latest such incident amid the country’s long-running war. While Iran did not immediately acknowledge the …

02-02-2023 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: NEW DELHI: India’s government on Wednesday unveiled one of its biggest jumps in capital spending in the past decade in its budget for the coming year and said the fiscal deficit would fall, as it tries to create jobs while maintaining financial discipline. Prime Minister …

02-02-2023 LONDON: Up to half a million British teachers, civil servants, train drivers and university lecturers have walked off their jobs to demand better pay and working conditions in the largest coordinated strike action in a generation as wages fail to keep pace with soaring inflation. About 300,000 people on …

01-02-2023 ABU DHABI: The crew of an Indian airline tied an Italian woman to her seat during a flight after she allegedly punched one member of staff and spat on another. The woman, who was travelling on a Vistara flight from Abu Dhabi, was arrested in Mumbai on Monday and …

01-02-2023 TEHRAN/ MOSCOW: DUBAI: Iran and Russia have connected their interbank communication and transfer systems to help boost trade and financial transactions, a senior Iranian official said on Monday, as both Tehran and Moscow are chafing under Western sanctions. Since the 2018 re-imposition of US sanctions on Iran after Washington …

01-02-2023 GENEVA: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has raised its 2023 global growth outlook slightly due to “surprisingly resilient” demand in the United States and Europe and the reopening of China’s economy after Beijing abandoned its strict zero-COVID strategy. The IMF said global growth would still fall to 2.9 percent …