Author: News Desk

ISLAMABAD : Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup and later led a reluctant Pakistan into aiding the U.S. war in Afghanistan against the Taliban, has died, officials said Sunday. He was 79. Musharraf, a former special forces commando, became president through the last of a string of military coups that roiled Pakistan since its founding amid the bloody 1947 partition of India. He ruled the nuclear-armed state after his 1999 coup through tensions with India, an atomic proliferation scandal and an Islamic extremist insurgency. He stepped down in 2008 while facing possible impeachment. Later in life,…

Manama : Finance and National Economy Minister Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa hailed solid fraternal relations binding the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Arab Republic of Egypt, led by His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. He stressed the commitment of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister to support bilateral relations and expand joint cooperation. This came as he received Egyptian Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Chairperson of Egypt’s Sovereignty Fund Dr. Hala Helmy el-Said, currently on visit to the Kingdom of Bahrain.…

Istanbul :  Eight people were killed and some 35 were injured, with four in critical condition, after an intercity bus toppled off a highway in Türkiye’s western Afyonkarahisar district, Governor Kubra Guran Yigitbasi. The passenger bus was on a cross-country route from Diyarbakir in the east to the western resort city of Bodrum. The driver lost control of the steering wheel in the high-altitude region, Yigitbasi was cited as saying by broadcaster TRT. She gave no further details. “I pray for Allah’s mercy on our citizens who lost their lives in the tragic bus accident in Afyonkarahisar’s Dinar distric,” Interior…

Manama : Industry and Commerce Minister Abdullah bin Adel Fakhro, inaugurated the Global Entrepreneurship Conference, organized by the Bahrain Entrepreneurship Foundation, on February 5-6. The minister affirmed Bahrain’s support to entrepreneurs and SMEs development. The Kingdom is keen to keep pace with the latest developments in the field of entrepreneurship, and to strengthen partnership between the public and private sectors to achieve the goals of Bahrain’s Economic Vision 2030, he added. He Indicated that the SMEs development council was formed with a plan based on five main pillars that facilitate the access of startups and SMEs to the necessary support…

At least 13 people were reported dead as a result of the more than 150 wildfires burning across Chile, which have destroyed homes and thousands of hectares of forest. The South American country is in the midst of a scorching heatwave that is set to continue with high temperatures and strong winds that could make the wildfires more challenging. Four of the deaths involved two vehicles in the Biobio region, about 560 kilometres south of the capital of Santiago. On Friday afternoon, a helicopter that was helping to fight the fires crashed in the Araucania region, killing the Bolivian pilot…

Authorities in India’s Assam state on Friday arrested more than 1,800 “husbands” and their relatives after launching a crackdown on child marriages in the region. Indian law prohibits the marriage of women below 18 years of age and of men under 21, but child marriages are prevalent throughout the country. A National Family Health Survey in 2019 found that almost one in five — 23.3 per cent — women between 20 and 24 years old were married before they turned 18. The percentage rose to 31 per cent in Assam, according to the survey. The remote state in India’s north-east has a high maternal and infant…

Pakistan has blocked access to Wikipedia for failing to remove what authorities considered “blasphemous content”. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority had earlier in the week given the online encyclopaedia 48 hours to remove the material, without publicly specifying its exact objections. Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan, and social media giants Facebook and YouTube have previously been banned for publishing content deemed sacrilegious. A spokesman for the telecoms regulator, Malahat Obaid, said Wikipedia was blocked across the country on Friday “after it failed to respond to our repeated correspondence over removal of the blasphemous content and meet the deadline”. Wikipedia is written…

Manama :  Twenty-Four male and female Bahraini workers signed their employment contracts to work in administrative and technical jobs at Ansar Gallery company. The signing took place at the Labour Ministry in the presence of Minister of Labour Jamil bin Mohammed Ali Humaidan. In a statement marking the occasion, the minister stressed the ministry’s continuous efforts to integrate Bahraini citizens in the labour market and provide them with the needed vocational training to get promoted in various sectors. He called on the new employees to acquire experiences and hone their professional skills to add more stories of success to the…

US : Secretary of State Antony Blinken will delay his trip to Beijing after the military spotted a suspected spy balloon drifting over Montana, a US official has said. Mr Blinken did not want to blow the situation out of proportion by cancelling his visit, but also did not want the balloon incident to dominate his meetings with Chinese officials, a high-ranking US official said in a call with reporters. “I spoke this morning with Director of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] Central Foreign Affairs Office Wang Yi to convey that, in light of China’s unacceptable action, I am postponing my planned…

Juba : Tens of thousands of people sang, drummed and ululated as Pope Francis arrived in South Sudan on Friday for an unprecedented joint “pilgrimage of peace” with his Anglican and Scottish Presbyterian counterparts. The young African country broke away from Sudan to become independent in 2011 after decades of conflict, but civil war erupted in 2013. Despite a 2018 peace deal between the two main antagonists, violence and hunger still plague the country. On the eve of the pope’s arrival, 27 people were killed in Central Equatorial state, where the country’s capital Juba is located, in tit-for-tat violence between…