Author: News Desk

Bahrain :  His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, sent a congratulatory cable to the Prime Minister of Malaysia, HE Ismail Sabri Yaakob, on the occasion of his swearing-in ceremony as Prime Minister. His Royal Highness highlighted the strong cooperation between the two nations and wished His Excellency success in his new role.

Riyadh : Saudi Foreign Affairs Minister, HH Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdulla, today held a telephone call with Morocco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Nasser Bourita. The two ministers reviewed bilateral relations, and ways to enhance them to achieve the interests of the two brotherly countries and peoples. They also discussed the latest regional and international developments of mutual interest.

Melbourne : Ash Barty’s brilliant year on the tennis tour has not shielded her from bouts of homesickness but the Australian is determined to keep working and stay world number one through the U.S. Open and beyond, coach Craig Tyzzer said. The 25-year-old stayed home in Queensland in 2020 as COVID-19 spread around the world but she returned to the tour this year to claim Wimbledon and four other titles. Now in New York warming up for the U.S. Open starting Monday, Barty will meet Vera Zvonareva in the first round, Reuters reports. With Australia’s strict quarantine rules quashing any…

Rome :  Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was admitted to Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital on Thursday evening. “He had to be admitted for a thorough clinical check-up,” the source said, giving no further details, reports Reuters today. Berlusconi, 84, has been in and out of hospital since contracting coronavirus last September. He said at the time that it was “the most dangerous challenge” of his life. The four-times prime minister and billionaire businessman underwent major heart surgery in 2016 and has also survived prostate cancer. He was last hospitalised in May, when he spent five days at San Raffaele.

Nigeria : Gunmen in Nigeria have freed a number of pupils who were kidnapped from an Islamic school in May, according to their head teacher. Some 136 students from the school in Tegina, Niger state, were seized by gunmen demanding a ransom. School officials say 15 students escaped in June and a further six died while in captivity. Mass abductions for ransom have become increasingly common across Nigeria in recent months. Head teacher Abubakar Alhassan said he could not give an exact number of how many students had been freed, but “none of the pupils are in captivity”. Last month,…

U.S. Treasury yields rose slightly on Friday morning, ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s highly anticipated speech at the central bank’s Jackson Hole symposium. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note added less than a basis point, advancing to 1.346% at 4 a.m. ET. The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond rose less than a basis point to 1.941%. Yields move inversely to prices and 1 basis point equals 0.01%.

China is not done with curbing the influence local internet services have assumed in the world’s largest populous market. Following a widening series of regulatory crackdowns in recent months, the nation on Friday issued draft guidelines on regulating the algorithms firms run to make recommendations to users the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) proposed forbidding companies from deploying algorithms that “encourage addiction or high consumption” and endanger national security or disrupt the public order. The services must abide by business ethics and principles of fairness and their algorithms must not be used to create fake user accounts or create other false impressions,…

Apple announced  it has reached a proposed settlement in a lawsuit filed against it by developers in the United States. The agreement, which is still pending court approval, includes a few changes, the biggest one being that developers will be able to share information on how to pay for purchases outside of their iOS app or the App Store—which means they can tell customers about payment options that aren’t subject to Apple commissions. The settlement also includes more pricing tiers and a new transparency report about the app review process. The class-action lawsuit was filed against Apple in 2019 by app developers Donald…

KABUL: Two suicide bombers and gunmen attacked crowds of Afghans flocking to Kabul’s airport Thursday, transforming a scene of desperation into one of horror in the waning days of an airlift for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. At least 60 Afghans and 12 US troops were killed, Afghan and the United States officials said. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attack outside the Kabul airport, the group’s Amaq News Agency said on its Telegram channel. The IS affiliate in Afghanistan is far more radical than the Taliban who recently took control of the country in a lightning blitz and condemned the attack. The…

Bahrain : Excavations in Muharraq have revealed unique and exceptional archaeological evidence that helps understand the history of Bahrain and the region, said Professor Timothy Insoll of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in the UK. Professor Insoll, also head of the British-Bahraini exploration team,  said that excavations on the hill in the cemetery of the village of Samahij revealed two archaeological buildings – a 300-year-old mosque, and a complex containing physical evidence of a Christian presence dating back to the 6th and 8th centuries AD. He was speaking remotely via video conference as…