11-01-2023 ATHENS: A group of 24 volunteers have gone on trial on the Greek island of Lesbos more than four years after they were arrested for carrying out migrant rescue missions off Greece. Their case was denounced in a European Parliament report as Europe’s “largest case of criminalization of solidarity”. …

11-01-2023 NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar has jailed 112 people, including 12 children, from the minority Rohingya after they were caught attempting to leave the country. The court in Bogale in the southern Ayeyarwady region of Myanmar sentenced the group on January 6, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Tuesday, …

11-01-2023 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI: “I don’t know what our fault is. What have we done to deserve this?” says a distraught Kanta Sharma, pointing to a shuttered cement plant in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. It’s one of two plants – the other is located …

11-01-2023 GAZA: Gazans drove a convoy of ambulances along the Israeli border Monday to protest import restrictions on medical equipment, which the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave warned puts patients at risk. Israel bans the transfer of goods to Gaza which it deems could be used for military purposes, …

11-01-2023 BRASILIA/ ORLANDO: Far-right former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was admitted to a hospital in Florida on Monday with stomach pains as 1,500 of his supporters were rounded up in Brasilia after storming key buildings in the capital over the weekend. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist who …

11-01-2023 CAIRO: Egypt continues to battle surging inflation amid a dramatic slide of its currency as many Egyptians struggle with price hikes, the country’s statistics bureau has said. The state-run Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) released figures on Tuesday showing that the annual inflation was at 21.9 …

11-01-2023 UNITED NATIONS/ TEHRAN: The UN human rights chief says the flurry of death sentences handed down following the outbreak of civil unrest in Iran amount to “state sanctioned killing”, with executions being used to strike fear into the population and stamp out dissent. “The weaponization of criminal procedures to …

11-01-2023 Bureau Report + Agencies LUCKNOW/ NEW DELHI: Indian authorities will demolish some buildings in a northern Himalayan town near the China border after evacuating families in the past few days, an official said on Tuesday, as hundreds of houses developed cracks in the area popular with pilgrims. Experts and …

11-01-2023 RIYADH: Islam’s annual Hajj pilgrimage will return to pre-pandemic levels this year after restrictions saw the annual religious commemoration curtailed over coronavirus concerns, Saudi authorities say. The Hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims once in their life, represents one of the world’s largest gatherings of people. Before the pandemic, …

11-01-2023 WASHINGTON: The US justice department is reviewing documents marked classified found in President Joe Biden’s former office at a think tank, the White House says. About 10 of the files were discovered in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center in Washington in November by Biden’s legal team, …