04-02-2023 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government presented to Parliament an annual budget of $550bn that calls for ramping up capital spending by 33 percent to spur economic growth and create jobs in advance of a general election next year. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday …

04-02-2023 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has said that the government will have to agree to International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout conditions that are “beyond imagination”. Sharif’s comments on Friday came after an IMF delegation landed in Pakistan this week for last-ditch talks …

04-02-2023 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report + Agencies KABUL/ ISLAMABAD: Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities have detained an academic who tore up his degrees on live television in protest against a ban on women’s university education in the country, his aide said on Friday. “From today I don’t need these diplomas …

04-02-2023 LONDON/ DUBAI: Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi said the death in custody of a young Iranian Kurdish woman last year has sparked an irreversible “revolutionary process” that would eventually lead to the collapse of the republic. Iran’s clerical rulers have faced widespread unrest since Mahsa Amini died …

04-02-2023 JERUSLAME: The Israeli occupation has launched a large-scale campaign of brutal repression against Palestinian prisoners, most notably female prisoners, in the wake of failed talks between the prisoners’ representatives and the occupation’s Prison Service. Simultaneously, the Waed Prisoners’ Association announced that 120 prisoners in Al-Naqab Prison are continuing their …

04-02-2023 WASHINGTON: Majid Khan, a Pakistani man who has described in graphic detail his torture by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has been transferred from the Guantanamo Bay US detention facility in Cuba to Belize, the Pentagon said …

04-02-2023 BEIJING: China’s foreign ministry has expressed regret over what it called a civilian balloon straying into United States airspace. In a statement on Friday, the ministry said the balloon suspected by the US of conducting surveillance was a civilian “airship” used for research, mainly for meteorological purposes. The statement …

04-02-2023 LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND: Up to 40 countries could boycott the next Olympic Games, making the whole event pointless, said Poland’s sport and tourism minister Kamil Bortniczuk. His comments came after Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia jointly rejected an International Olympic Committee (IOC) plan to allow Russians and Belarusians to compete …

04-02-2023 JUBA: Twenty-seven people have been killed in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria state in tit-for-tat violence between cattle herders and members of a militia on the eve of a visit to the country by Pope Francis. The incident happened on Thursday, according to a local official. The pope is set …

04-02-2023 JERUSALEM: Every Saturday evening for the past month, thousands of Israelis have taken part in antigovernmental protests across the country. Their handmade signs reveal the focus of the demonstrations: “Democracy for everyone” read one, in Hebrew and English. Others spelled out the participants’ support for the Israeli Supreme Court, …