Author: News Desk

Hong Kong has overcome its challenges and “risen from the ashes”, China’s President Xi Jinping said on Thursday, as he arrived in the former British colony to celebrate 25 years since its return to Chinese rule. Xi is to swear in the global financial hub’s new leader, John Lee, on Friday during his first visit to the city since 2017, which is also his first known trip outside the mainland in more than two years, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Wearing masks, Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, stepped off a high-speed train to be greeted by children waving flowers and…

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday rejected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s charge that if he were a woman he would not have invaded Ukraine. Speaking at a news conference in the early hours of Thursday during a visit to Turkmenistan, Putin pointed to former British leader Margaret Thatcher’s decision to send troops into the Falklands as a rebuttal of Johnson’s theory. Johnson on Wednesday dubbed Putin’s decision to launch what Moscow calls a “special military operation” against Ukraine a “perfect example of toxic masculinity” and mocked Putin’s macho posturing. Hitting back, Putin told reporters: “I just want to recall…

Russian forces have withdrawn from Ukraine’s Snake Island, a strategic outpost in the Black Sea, Russia’s defence ministry and Ukraine’s president’s office said on Thursday. “KABOOM! No Russian troops on the Snake Island anymore. Our Armed Forces did a great job,” Andriy Yermak, head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s office, wrote on Twitter. Russia’s defence ministry confirmed Russian troops had withdrawn from Snake Island, calling it a “goodwill gesture” and saying the troops had fulfilled the tasks assigned to them. The Russian ministry added the move showed Russia was not impeding U.N. efforts to organise a humanitarian corridor to export…

Trade through Lithuania to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad could return to normal within days, two sources familiar with the matter said, as European officials edge towards a compromise deal with the Baltic state to defuse a row with Moscow. Kaliningrad, which is bordered by European Union states and relies on railways and roads through Lithuania for most goods, has been cut off from some freight transport from mainland Russia since June 17 under sanctions imposed by Brussels. European officials are in talks about exempting the territory from sanctions, which have hit industrial goods such as steel so far, paving…

President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that Russia would respond in kind if NATO deployed troops and infrastructure in Finland and Sweden after they join the U.S.-led military alliance. “With Sweden and Finland, we don’t have the problems that we have with Ukraine. They want to join NATO, go ahead,” Putin told Russian state television after talks with regional leaders in the central Asian ex-Soviet state of Turkmenistan. “But they must understand there was no threat before, while now, if military contingents and infrastructure are deployed there, we will have to respond in kind and create the same threats for…

Bahrain ranked 1st globally in multiple subindices within Metas’ (Facebook) Inclusive Internet Index conducted by Economist Impact, including national female e-inclusion policies, female digital skills training & STEM education, open data policies, and privacy regulations. The Inclusive Internet Index 2022 measures whether the internet is accessible and affordable in each country and how much it enables social and economic mobility. It assesses the performance of 100 countries in four indicators of inclusion: availability (usage, infrastructure and quality), readiness (literacy, safety and policy), affordability (price and competitive environment), and relevance (local and relevant content). Dalal Buhejji, Executive Director of Investment Origination…

NATO invited Sweden and Finland on Wednesday to join the military alliance in one of the biggest shifts in European security in decades after Helsinki and Stockholm dropped their traditional neutrality. “Today, we have decided to invite Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO,” NATO leaders said in their declaration, after Turkey lifted a veto on Finland and Sweden joining. Ratification in allied parliaments is likely to take up to a year, but once it is done, Finland and Sweden will be covered by NATO’s Article 5 collective defence clause, putting them under the United States’ protective nuclear umbrella.…

A missile strike killed at least three people in a residential building in the southern Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv on Wednesday as Russian forces intensified their attacks on multiple fronts. In the east, the governor of Luhansk province said there was “fighting everywhere” in the battle around the city of Lysychansk, which Russian troops were trying to encircle. The governor of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine said Russian shelling had increased there too in the past few days. “Several villages have been wiped from the face of the earth,” Oleksander Vilkul said. The stepped-up attacks took place as Russian President…

Donald Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his presidential limousine on Jan. 6, 2021, when his security detail declined to take him to the U.S. Capitol where his supporters were rioting, a former aide testified on Tuesday. The then-president dismissed concerns that some supporters gathered for his fiery speech outside the White House that day carried AR-15-style rifles, instead asking security to stop screening attendees with metal-detecting magnetometers so the crowd would look larger, the aide testified. “Take the effing mags away; they’re not here to hurt me,” Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a top aide to Trump’s then-White…

The nosedive in cryptocurrency markets has wiped out millions of dollars in funds stolen by North Korean hackers, four digital investigators say, threatening a key source of funding for the sanctions-stricken country and its weapons programmes. North Korea has poured resources into stealing cryptocurrencies in recent years, making it a potent hacking threat and leading to one of the largest cryptocurrency heists on record in March, in which almost $615 million was stolen, according to the U.S. Treasury. The sudden plunge in crypto values, which started in May amid a broader economic slowdown, complicates Pyongyang’s ability to cash in on…