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 …

01-02-2023 By SJA Jafri + BBC MELBOURNE/ SYDNEY: Almost 650 people have been charged in a four-day police blitz targeting “dangerous” domestic violence offenders in Australia, police say. Some 1,153 charges – for domestic violence, drugs and weapons were laid during the operation in New South Wales last week. Police …

01-02-2023 JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to meet Palestinian leaders Tuesday for his final stop on a Middle East tour aimed at curbing the worst outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence in years. After a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Blinken urged both sides …

01-02-2023 MOSCOW: Russia said on Monday that it wanted to take ties with China to a “new level” and was looking forward to face-to-face talks with Beijing’s leadership as a Russian newspaper reported that China’s top diplomat would visit Moscow in February. “We are convinced that the potential for Russian-Chinese …