22-06-2024 JERUSALEM/ GAZA CITY: The Israeli military pounded Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip even as it intensified its attacks in the north and centre of the besieged Palestinian territory. Residents said Israeli forces seemed to be trying to complete their capture of Rafah, the city on the enclave’s southern …

22-06-2024 TAIPEI: Tens of thousands of supporters of Taiwan’s ruling party are expected to gather outside parliament on Friday after it pushed ahead with a hugely controversial “contempt of parliament” bill. The opposition Kuomintang party (KMT) says the new law is badly needed to redress the power imbalance between the …

22-06-2024 VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis has been told by a Filipino Catholic university student to “stop using offensive language” against LGBTQ people. Slurs cause “immense pain”, Jack Lorenz Acebedo Rivero said during an online video panel with other Catholic university students and the pope. His comments come after reports that …

22-06-2024 MOSCOW: Vladimir Putin has warned South Korea it would be making “a big mistake” if it arms Ukraine in the war against Russia. His comments come after Seoul said it was considering such a possibility, in response to Russia and North Korea’s new pact to help each other in …

22-06-2024 By SJA Jafri ISLAMABAD/ SWAT: A tourist has been dragged from a police station and killed by a mob in north-west Pakistan after being accused of blasphemy. The police had been attempting to protect the man from the large group in the town of Madyan, a town in Swat …

22-06-2024 WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal ban on gun possession for anyone covered by a domestic violence court order. The vote was 8-to-1. The decision was the first major gun ruling since 2022 when the high court broke sharply with the way gun laws had …

22-06-2024 WINDHOEK: In a landmark ruling for gay rights campaigners, laws banning same-sex acts between men have been ruled unconstitutional in Namibia. Convictions for the colonial-era offences of “sodomy” and “unnatural sexual offences” were rare but fueled discrimination against gay men who lived in fear of arrest. No laws exist …

21-06-2024 WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden’s main re-election SuperPAC is raising millions of dollars to try to solve a problem vexing Democrats: how to compete with Republican Donald Trump’s social media machine that spits out a wall of viral videos. The previously unreported effort by the highly-secretive Future Forward USA …

21 Jun 2024 JERUSALEM/ GAZA CITY: Israeli tanks push deeper into western Rafah in south Gaza, firing shells at displaced people’s tents, with one armoured vehicle blown up by a Hamas-planted improvised explosive device. The White House describes Benjamin Netanyahu’s criticism of the suspension of one US weapons delivery to …

21-06-2024 UNITED NATIONS: A global alert about fake versions of Ozempic which has become popular as a way of losing weight has been issued by the World Health Organization (WHO). The drug is sometimes known as a “skinny jab” despite its main purpose being a treatment for type 2 diabetes. …