Author: News Desk

China: The ruling Taliban has agreed to associate with a Chinese company to collect oil from the Amu Darya basin in northern Afghanistan as part of their efforts to support the South Asian nation’s increasingly impoverished and isolated economy. The Taliban have not entered into any significant international energy extraction contracts since taking control in Afghanistan in 2021 until their agreement with China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co. According to a statement, the deal was signed in Kabul in the presence of Mr. Wang Yu, the Chinese ambassador to Afghanistan, and Mr. Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy…

Saudi Arabia: The international governing body of the association of football FIFA has appointed Saudi Arabia’s first female international referee less than a year after the conservative kingdom’s national women’s team made their debut. The Saudi Arabian Football Federation produced a list that included Anoud al-Asmari’s name on it. The new referee is the only woman among the eight Saudis who were named to the international panel by football’s top governing body. Al-Asmari’s international badge is the latest in a series of steps in football by the oil-rich Saudis, who have lured 37-year-old great Cristiano Ronaldo to the Saudi Pro League and…

Sudan: Interpol has announced that “the world’s most wanted” people smuggler, Mr. Kidane Zekarias Habtemariam has been arrested in Sudan in coordination with UAE authorities. Mr. Habtemariam has been accused of being a smuggling kingpin, running a camp in Libya where hundreds of East African migrants seeking passage to Europe were allegedly kidnapped, raped, and extorted. According to UAE interior ministry official Mr. Saeed Abdullah al-Suwaidi, the people smuggler, who was the subject of two Interpol red notices by Ethiopia and the Netherlands, was arrested on January 1 by Sudanese police in coordination with UAE authorities. “We have now shut…

United Kingdom: Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum on 5th January 2023, as per the report. Mr. Alon Gal, the co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity monitoring company Hudson Rock, stated on LinkedIn that the breach “will, unfortunately, lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing, and doxxing.” One of the biggest spills I’ve ever seen, the co-founder noted. Mr. Gal initially discussed the report on social media on December 24th. Since then, no comments or questions regarding the breach have been given by Twitter. What steps Twitter…

South Carolina: The supreme court of South Carolina has struck down the state’s “fetal heartbeat” law, which bans abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The court referred to the ban as an “unreasonable restriction that violates a woman’s constitutional right to privacy.” In the ruling, judge Mr. Kaye Hearn wrote that the “state constitutional right to privacy extends to a woman’s decision to have an abortion.” Mr. Hearn remarked that “while the state could set some limits on abortion, any regulation on privacy in regards to the procedure should give a woman sufficient time to determine she is…

United States: According to a study, researchers are using a novel strategy to transform cancer cells into effective anti-cancer agents. The study claims that researchers have created a brand-new cell therapy strategy to get rid of established tumours and promote long-term immunity, training the immune system to stop cancer from returning. The findings from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the team of scientists tested their dual-action, cancer-killing vaccine in a sophisticated mouse model of the deadly brain tumour glioblastoma, with encouraging findings. The journal Science Translational Medicine published the findings. “Our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and…

United States: The Women’s Tennis Association has stated that it wants to meet Ms. Peng Shuai in person before the association resumes tournaments in China. In 2022, the former tennis star accused a top Chinese official of sexual assault in a social media post. Ms. Peng then disappeared from the public eye and later denied making the allegations. The association further called for a “formal investigation” into the accusations. In a statement, the WTA remarked that it would not “compromise its founding principles to operate events in China.” “We have received confirmation that Peng is safe and comfortable, but we…

France: A mayor in France stated that his town’s name would change to feminine for a year to promote gender equality. The decision was made by Mr. Bertrand Kern, the socialist mayor of Pantin, a town outside of Paris, in a video message posted on Twitter. “Pantin will for a year be called Pantine, equality between women and men” and the struggle to end “violence against women,” the mayor remarked. A noun can often be made feminine in French by adding an ‘e’ at the end. The mayor hoped it would be “a wake-up call for this equality between women…

China: The World Health Organization has criticised China’s “very narrow” definition of COVID deaths, claiming that official statistics from the country were not showing the true impact of the outbreak. The world’s most populous country has witnessed a steep rise in COVID-19 infections since Beijing abruptly lifted years of strict restrictions at the end of 2022. “We still do not have complete data,” WHO’s emergencies director, Mr. Michael Ryan, remarked. “We believe that the current numbers being published from China under-represent the true impact of the disease in terms of hospital admissions, ICU admissions, and particularly deaths,” Mr. Ryan stated.…

United Kingdom: Prince Harry claims attention after his controversial Netflix documentary on a new memoir “Spare”, which is scheduled to be released later this month amid an ongoing dispute within the British royal family, claims the tabloid. 38-year-old Mr. Harry claims that Mr. William called his wife Ms. Meghan Markle “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive” during a disagreement in the kitchen of his London home before pushing him to the ground as the pair continued to argue, as per the report. The latest information regarding the troubled relationship between the brothers comes as their father King Charles gets ready for his…