GANGSTER Sukhdul Singh alias Sukha Duneke, one of Punjab’s most wanted criminals, was killed in the Canadian city of Winnipeg by unidentified people, sources said on Thursday. “It is believed to be the result of inter-gang rivalry,” a source said. The killing of the Canada-based gangster, who had at least 18 cases against him including those for murder, attempt to murder and robbery, took place on Wednesday night Canada time, the sources said. The development comes at a time when India and Canada ..

NORTH Korea said on Thursday its latest missile launches simulated “scorched earth” nuclear strikes on South Korea and that it’s also been rehearsing an occupation of its rivals’ territory in the event of conflict. Pyongyang has previously tested nuclear-capable missiles and described how it would use them in potential wars with South Korea and the US But the North’s disclosure of detailed war plans reaffirmed its aggressive nuclear doctrine to intimidate its opponents, as it escalates its protest ..

THE tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant ‘s operator says it began releasing its first batch of treated radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean on Thursday —acontroversial step,butamilestoneforJapan’s battlewiththegrowingradioactive water stockpile. In a live video from a control room at the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings showedastaffmember turn onaseawater pump with a click of a mouse, marking the beginning of the controversialprojectthatisexpected to last for decades. ..

RESEARCHERS at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore have identified the cause of an over three million square kilometres-wide ‘gravity hole’ in the Indian Ocean. Located just south of Sri Lanka, it is at this location the Earth’s gravitational pull is weakest and sea level is over 100 metre lower than global average. The researchers noted that in the absence of tides and currents on the oceans, all the water would settle onto a smoothly undulating shape called a geoid, rising wherever ..

IN A relief to embattled Imran Khan, a top Pakistani court on Tuesday overturned the ruling of a sessions court and declared the Toshakhana corruption case against the former Prime Minister inadmissible. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Khan, 70, was indicted in the Toshakhana case on May 10 by Additional Sessions Judge Humayun Dilawar, who rejected objections about the admissibility of the case. The PTI chief then approached the Islamabad High Court, which had stayed criminal proceedings on ..

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin on Monday blasted organisers of a weekend revolt, the gravest threat yet to his power, as traitors who played into the hands of Ukraine’s Government and its allies. Speaking in a stern tone and looking tired in a five-minute TV address near midnight, Putin sought to project stability...

   MOSCOW, RUSSIAN Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu made his first public appearance since a mercenary uprising demanded his ouster, inspecting troops in Ukraine in a video released on Monday aimed at projecting a sense of order after th..

INDIA is a vibrant democracy and anybody who happens to go to New Delhi can see that for themselves, the White House said on Monday, as it appeared to dismiss concerns about the health of democracy in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on a state visit to the US later this month. “India is a vibrant democracy. Anybody that, you know, happens to go to New Delhi can see that for themselves. And certainly, I would expect that strength and health of democratic institutions will be part of the ..

   WASHINGTON, THE US military said on Tuesday that a Chinese fighter jet flew aggressively close to a US reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea, forcing the American pilot to fly through the turbulent wake. The Chinese J-16 ..

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the strongest and biggest foundations of India-Australia relations are mutual trust and respect as he along with his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese addressed the Indian diaspora at a mega event here and renamed a suburb as ‘Little India’, reflecting the strong bond between the two strategic partners. Addressing the gathering at the Qudos Bank Arena, Prime Minister Modi also announced that India would open a consulate in Brisbane to fulfill the ..

THE European Union slapped Meta with a record USD 1.3 billion privacy fine on Monday and ordered it to stop transferring user data across the Atlantic by October, the latest salvo in a decade-long case sparked by US cybersnooping fears. The penalty of 1.2 billion Euros is the biggest since the EU’s strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon’s 746 million Euro fine in 2021 for data protection violations...

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said he held a very fruitful meeting with his British counterpart Rishi Sunak during which they reviewed bilateral strategic partnership, including progress in the India-UK FTA negotiations. The two leaders also agreed to deepen bilateral cooperation across a wide range of areas such as trade and investment and science and technology. Modi and Sunak met on the sidelines of the summit of the G7 advanced economies here in Hiroshima. “The meeting with PM @RishiSunak ..

PAKISTAN has no other option but to ask its all-weather ally China to bail out its ailing economy to avert full fledged eruption of the Balance of Payment (BoP) crisis if the IMF does not revive the USD 6.5 billion programme, according to a media report on Tuesday. The policymakers are left with no other options but to explore all other ways to avert default as well as choking off the economy of over 220 million people, ‘The News..

  ISLAMABAD : ■ Pakistan’s Supreme Court directed NAB to produce Imran Khan within an hour  IN A major relief for Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday declared the former Prime Minister’s arrest..

  LONDON : KING Charles III was officially crowned as the 40th King of the United Kingdom at a ceremony steeped in history with modern multi-faith touches amid pomp, pageantry and choir music inside the iconic Westminster Abbey here on a ra..

   CAIRO, SUDANESE fleeing the fighting between rival generals in their capital flooded an already overwhelmed city on the Red Sea and Sudan’s northern borders with Egypt, as explosions and gunfire echoed on Tuesday in Khartoum.M..

(AP) MANY of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue checks that helped verify their identity and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Muskowned social media platform. After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise on Thursday to remove the blue checks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee to keep them. Twitter had about 3,00,000 verified users under the original blue-check system — many of them journalists, athletes andpublic figures. The checks —which used ..

UKRAINE’S First Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzhaparova will pay a four-day visit to India from Sunday, the first official visit from the East European country since the Russian invasion began last year. Dzhaparova will hold talks with Sanjay Verma, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). It is expected that the Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister may extend an invitation for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Ukraine...

FORMER Twitter cofounder and CEO Jack Dorsey was left poorer by $526 million after short-seller Hindenburg Research revealed that his digital payment company Block facilitates fraud against consumers and the Government. After his worst single-day decline, Dorsey is now worth $4.4 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Block’s shares nosedived as much as 22 per cent on Thursday, before closing down 15 per cent late on Thursday. Block, formerly known as Square, claims to have developed ..

GENETIC material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA commingled with the virus, adding evidence to the theory that the virus originated from animals, not from a lab, international experts say. “These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday. ..

A COURT in the US has cleared Elon Musk in a class-action securities fraud over his tweets about taking Tesla private. The jurors deliberated for about two hours before reaching the verdict, called a “disappointed” one by Nicholas Porritt, partner at Levi & Korsinsky, the firm representing the Tesla shareholders in the class action, reports CNBC. Musk tweeted that he is “deeply appreciative of the jury’s unanimous finding”. His lead counsel Alex Spiro argued before the jury on Friday, saying “fraud ..

A SECOND Chinese spy balloon has been spotted, this time in the skies over Latin America, the Pentagon has said, a day after another one of the size of three buses and carrying a “large” payload was seen in US skies that prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his planned visit to China. “We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America. We now assess it as another Chinese surveillance balloon. We have no further information to provide at this time,” Pentagon Press Secretary ..

AHEAD of its crucial talks with the cash-strapped Pakistan Government, the IMF has found an over Rs 2,000 billion breach in budgetary estimates for 2022-23 in its initial assessment that might result in escalating the budget deficit and primary deficit targets with a massive margin. Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials are scheduled to kick-start parleys from Tuesday for accomplishing the ninth review under the Extended Fund Facility during which the fiscal slippages and reconciliat..

FORMER Pope Emeritus BenedictXVI,theshyGerman theologian who tried to reawaken Christianity in a secularised Europe but will foreverberememberedasthe first pontiff in 600 years to resign from the job, died Saturday. He was 95. Benedictstunnedtheworld on Feb. 11, 2013, when he announced, in his typical, soft-spoken Latin,that he no longer had the strength to run the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic Church that he had steered for eight years through scandal and indifference. His dramatic decision paved the ..

TWITTER has abruptly suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists who cover the social media platform and Elon Musk, who acquired the company in October. The accounts of Ryan Mac of ‘The New York Times’, Donie O’Sullivan of ‘CNN’, Drew Harwell of ‘The Washington Post’, Matt Binder of ‘Mashable’, Micah Lee of ‘The Intercept’, Steve Herman of ‘Voice of America’, and independent journalists Aaron Rupar, Keith Olbermann as well as Tony Webster had all been suspended as of Thursday evening, ..