17-12-2020 PARIS: A Paris court has handed jail terms ranging from four years to life to more than a dozen people convicted of helping gunmen who massacred cartoonists at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and customers at a Jewish supermarket in January 2015. Lawyers for the victims and activists hailed Wednesday’s …

16-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Al-Jazeera LILLE/ PARIS/ DOHA: Three far-right activists in France caught on camera during an Al Jazeera undercover investigation have been found guilty of offences that included assault, and in one case incitement to “terrorism”. A judge at the High Court in the northern city of …

16-12-2020 TEHRAN/ PARIS/ LONDON: While Iran is not “excited” by Joe Biden taking over at the White House, it was “very happy” to see the end of Donald Trump’s reign as US president, according to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. Addressing a televised meeting of the cabinet on Wednesday, Rouhani called …

16-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Agencies RIYADH: Saudi Arabia is detaining hundreds of mainly Ethiopian migrants in squalid conditions in Riyadh, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said, quoting some as saying they had been tortured or beaten. The migrants at the centre, mostly from Ethiopia but also from other African or …

15-12-2020 Bureau Report SYDNEY/ CANBERRA: Australian authorities have issued evacuation warnings for low-lying towns in northern New South Wales (NSW) as storms and floods batter the nation’s east coast. On Tuesday, emergency officials said they had fielded about 150 calls for help in the past 24 hours. Huge swells pummeled …

15-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Agencies ABUJA/ ISLAMABAD/ KABUL: The Boko Haram group {an ultimate organization directly headed and supervised by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan/ TTP or only “Taliban” (founder of al-Qaeda, Daesh, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/ ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant/ ISIL or Islamic State/ IS) …

15-12-2020 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report KABUL/ ISLAMABAD: Kabul’s Deputy Governor and his assistant have been killed in a blast in Afghanistan, police say, adding that a sticky bomb was attached to his car by unknown assailants. Deputy Governor Mahboobullah Mohebi was travelling to work on Tuesday with his …

15-12-2020 WASHINGTON: United States President-elect Joe Biden claimed victory in the Electoral College after key battleground states gave him and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris a clear majority of electors and he rebuked President Donald Trump for failing to acknowledge the will of the American people. “The flame of democracy was …

14-12-2020 By SJA Jafri ISLAMABAD/ BEIJING: Learning of the Urdu language has become a new trend among Chinese students, said the Urdu professor of a Chinese university on Sunday. Prof Zhou Yuan is heading the Urdu Department at the School of Asian and African Studies of the Beijing Foreign Studies …

14-12-2020 JEDDAH/ DUBAI: An oil tanker off Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jeddah has been hit by an unidentified “external source” that caused a fire and an explosion, a shipping company said, suggesting another vessel has come under attack off the kingdom amid its years-long war in Yemen. In a …