Daily News Pakistan

Japan sent on Thursday (Feb 29) two mini-drones and a "snake-shaped robot" into one of three nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant crippled by a tsunami in 2011, the facility's operator said. The gadgets were deployed in preparation for the removal of hundreds of tonnes of highly radioactive fuel and rubble, a risky operation expected to take decades. "We sent two drones yesterday and two drones today", in addition to the "snake-shaped robot" on Thursday, a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) told news agency. Since the interior is "cramped and dark", the small drones are "highly maneuverable and have enhanced photographic capabilities", the company said. The "snake-like robot ... houses wireless communications relay so that we can properly cover the radio transmission area within which the small drones will be operated", a statement said. The interior of the reactor buildings is too radioactive for

New Zealand on Thursday joined the US and UK in sanctions on several extremist Israeli settlers amid escalating violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. In a statement, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters announced travel bans on a number of extremist Israeli settlers who have committed violent attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank. “New Zealand is seriously concerned by the significant increase in extremist violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers against Palestinian populations in recent months. This is particularly destabilising in what is already a major crisis,” said Luxon. Luxon added that his country imposed travel bans on a number of people known to have committed violent acts and that these individuals will not be able to travel to New Zealand. “New Zealand has taken this step to signal clearly that this behaviour is unacceptable," Peters also said. “Individuals responsible for perpetrating acts of violence a

The United States has urged Pakistan to continue working with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international financial institutions for economic stability in the country. The remarks come after the PTI wrote a letter to the global lender urging the lender to endorse an audit of the 2024 elections. “I’ll just say with respect to the IMF that we support Pakistan’s efforts to break free from the vicious cycle of debt and international financing,” Spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “The long-term health of Pakistan’s government – or economy is crucial to its stability.” “Pakistan’s new government must immediately prioritize the economic situation because the policies over the next several months will be crucial to maintaining economic stability for Pakistanis,” he added. Miller also urged Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF and other international financial institutions towards macroeconomic reforms”. PTI letter to IMF In the letter written to IMF Managing Dire

The addition of several WhatsApp accounts within a single WhatsApp app is intended to enhance the user's chatting experience, according to the company. In October of last year, Meta-owned WhatsApp announced that Android users would no longer need to have several devices for separate accounts with its multiple accounts functionality. “We are introducing the ability to have two WhatsApp accounts logged in at the same time. Helpful for switching between accounts – such as your work and personal – now you no longer need to log out each time, carry two phones, or worry about messaging from the wrong place,” Meta said in October. You will need a second phone number and a SIM card, or a device that supports multiple SIM cards, in order to register the second account. In addition, your second phone number won't be active because it's not being used right now, but the one you're presently logged into will be your active account. According to WhatsApp, in order to view the

South Korea’s birth rate fell to a record low last year, the government said on Wednesday, despite having poured billions of dollars into efforts to encourage women to have more children and maintain population stability. The country has one of the world’s longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates, a combination that presents a looming demographic challenge. Neighbouring Japan is grappling with the same issue, and on Tuesday the fast-ageing nation announced that the number of births there had also dropped to a new low in 2023. South Korea’s fertility rate — the number of children a woman is expected to have in her lifetime — dropped to 0.72 in 2023, down nearly eight per cent from 2022, according to preliminary data from Statistics Korea. This is far below the 2.1 children needed to maintain the current population of 51 million, which at these rates will nearly halve by the year 2100, experts estimate. The government has spent vast amounts on trying to encourage more babi

Representatives of Hamas and Fatah will meet in Moscow on February 29 to discuss the formation of a unified Palestinian government and the rebuilding of Israel's besieged Gaza, the RIA state news agency has reported, citing the Palestinian ambassador to Russia. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov also confirmed to RIA Novosti that such a meeting was planned. Palestine demands Israel cover Gaza reconstruction costs The Palestinian Authority has demanded that Israel bear the financial burden of rebuilding Gaza and to demonstrate a greater commitment to maintaining the two-state solution. "Israel must be held accountable for the devastation and casualties in the Gaza Strip and assume the responsibility for its reconstruction,'' Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said during a meeting with Japanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Tsuji Kiyoto in Ramallah. Shtayyeh's government will serve as a caretaker administration until a new government can be fo

A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced top human rights campaigner Oleg Orlov to two and a half years in jail for denouncing Russia’s assault on Ukraine. The 70-year-old, a key figure of the Nobel Prize-winning Memorial group, is the latest target of Kremlin repression, which has intensified since the offensive in Ukraine. “The court has determined Orlov’s guilt and orders a sentence of two years and six months […] in a general regime penal colony,” the judge said. Orlov was accused of discrediting the Russian army in a column written for the French online publication Mediapart, and fined in October after a first trial. The fine was a relatively lenient punishment and prosecutors called for a new trial. As the judge read the verdict, the bespectacled, white-haired activist winked at his wife, fellow activist Tatyana Kosatkina. He was taken into custody in the courtroom and asked Kosatkina to come over. “You promised me!” he told her as she appeared to tear up. ‘Keep working’ Ha

U.S. President Joe Biden said Israel has agreed to halt military activities in Gaza for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, as Hamas studied a draft proposal for a truce which includes a pause in fighting and a prisoner-hostage exchange. The draft proposal, which a senior source close to truce talks in Paris told Reuters would allow hospitals and bakeries in Gaza to be repaired and 500 aid trucks to enter the battered enclave every day, is the most serious attempt in weeks to end the conflict which erupted in October last year. Ramadan is expected to begin on the evening of March 10 and end on the evening of April 9. "Ramadan is coming up, and there’s been an agreement by the Israelis that they would not engage in activities during Ramadan, as well, in order to give us time to get all the hostages out," Biden said during an appearance on talkshow "Late Night with Seth Meyers". He also warned that Israel risked losing international support due to the high death t

Arab states and Turkey urged international judges on Monday to rule the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories illegal and Turkiye described the occupation as “the real obstacle to peace” on the final day of hearings in a case examining its legal status. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been hearing arguments from more than 50 states following a request by the UN General Assembly in 2022 to issue a non-binding opinion on the legal consequences of the Israeli occupation. On the sixth and last day of hearings, Turkiye’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz told judges the occupation was the root cause of conflict in the region. “The unfolding situation after October 7 proves once again that, without addressing the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there can be no peace in the region,” he said, describing the occupation of Palestinian territories as “the real obstacle to peace” and urging the judges to declare it illegal. Israel, which is not taking

Samsung Electronics has unveiled its latest smart ring. With this new model, Samsung sets a new standard for wearable technology and puts the company one step ahead of its competitors, especially from Apple. Samsung Electronics has recently unveiled its latest smart device, the ‘Galaxy Ring.’ It is a ring-like wearable that collects and analyzes health data, such as sleep and activity levels. The company announced on Feb. 26 (local time), that the Galaxy Ring was displayed for the first time at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, which is the world’s biggest mobile communications exhibition. However, the Galaxy Ring was showcased in acrylic for security reasons until its official release. Samsung Electronics plans to launch the Galaxy Ring within the year. Samsung Electronics has invested a significant amount of time in designing the Galaxy Ring before its launch. When the Galaxy Ring was unveiled, it was revealed that it had a sleeker design than the current top

France’s Eiffel Tower that had been closed for five days by a strike will reopen on Sunday (today) after the monument’s management announced a deal had been struck with unions. The stoppage since Monday at one of the world’s best-known tourist sites was the second within two months in protest at what unions say was insufficient investment. The tower’s operator SETE said it had reached agreement with the unions on Saturday “under which the parties will regularly monitor the company’s business model, investment in works and revenue through a body that will meet every six months”. With an aim to balance its books by 2025, both sides also agreed to see an investment of some 380 million euros up to 2031 toward works and maintenance of the tower, the statement said. SETE extended apologies to visitors caught in the strike action, which resulted in the loss of some 100,000 admissions. The Eiffel Tower booked a shortfall of around 120m euros ($130m) during the Covid pandemic in 2020 and

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday he was resigning to allow for the formation of a broad consensus among Palestinians about political arrangements following Israel's war against the Islamist group Hamas in Gaza. The move comes amid growing U.S. pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas to shake up the Palestinian Authority as international efforts have intensified to stop the fighting in Gaza and begin work on a political structure to govern the enclave after the war. His resignation must still be accepted by Abbas, who may ask him to stay on as caretaker until a permanent replacement is appointed. In a statement to cabinet, Shtayyeh, an academic economist who took office in 2019, said the next stage would need to take account of the emerging reality in Gaza, which has been laid waste by nearly five months of heavy fighting. He said the next stage would "require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the emerging reality i

An active-duty member of the US Air Force set himself on fire Sunday outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. in protest against the war in Gaza, according to multiple reports. “I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest but, compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal,” 25-year-old Aaron Bushnell said prior to setting himself on fire. Footage showing the protest and the moment when Bushnell set himself on fire went viral on social media. The fire was extinguished by Secret Service personnel and Bushnell was subsequently dispatched to an area hospital due to "critical life-threatening injuries," said the DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department. The report mentioned that an adult male had set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, according to the offic

Smartwatches may not only help count steps and sleep but can also offer mental health clinicians valuable information about depression symptoms, according to a new study. Wearable technology is part of a focus on precision medicine that will allow clinicians to better tailor treatment for individual patients, said Joshua Curtiss, Assistant Professor of applied psychology at Northeastern University, US. “The purpose of this type of research was to figure out if we can use passive sensor data to predict the things we care about — to see if it is associated with changes in depression severity or symptom severity,” Curtiss said. “It showed the very individualised ways depression manifests in people,” he said, in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. For the study, the team took data from anonymised patients at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), who wore the Empatica E3 wristband to track sleep, acceleration and movement, heart rate variability and other phys

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 31,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the war with Russia, in a rare official statement on military losses sustained during the two-year war. At a press conference in Kyiv, Zelensky said: "31,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died in this war. Not 300,000 or 150,000, or whatever Putin and his lying circle are saying. But each of these losses is a great loss for us." Volodymyr Zelensky said he would not give the number of wounded as that would help Russian military planning. Typically, Ukrainian officials do not make public the numbers of servicepeople killed in the war. It comes after the defence minister said half of all Western aid for Ukraine has been delayed, costing lives and territory. "At the moment, commitment does not constitute delivery," Rustam Umerov said in a televised address on Sunday. Ukraine is currently experiencing a variety of setbacks in its mission to drive Russia from its territory. Mr Umer

Azerbaijan on Sunday said that Armenia opened fire at its military positions in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Region. A statement by the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said that the Armenian military opened fire on positions near the exclave's Heydarabad settlement at 9:40 p.m. (1740GMT) on Saturday. The statement gave no further information. Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions, including Kalbajar. Azerbaijan liberated most of the region during the war in the fall of 2020, which ended with a Russian-brokered peace agreement, opening the door to normalization. Baku initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh last September to establish constitutional order, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered. However, tensions on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border reignited when Baku said one of

At least 15 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a fire at an apartment block in eastern China’s Nanjing, local authorities have said. The blaze in the Yuhuatai district of Nanjing appears to have started on Friday on the residential building’s first floor, where electric bikes were stored, officials said at a press conference, citing the results of a preliminary investigation. The fire was put out by about 6am and a search and rescue operation was wrapped up at about 2pm on Friday, authorities said. Forty-four people were sent to hospital for treatment, according to authorities, with one person in a “critical condition”. Twenty-five fire trucks were deployed to fight the blaze, emergency services said. Footage shared on Chinese social media sites showed a skyscraper on fire at night, with black smoke emitting from the structure. Fires and other disasters are a common occurrence in China, where safety standards have lagged behind the country’s break-neck developme

WhatsApp has added several new features for iOS and Android users, which are listed below. 24.4.10.76 is the WhatsApp beta version for iOS Users can now mark favourite contacts on WhatsApp. Using the calls page, users can call their favorite contacts straight away with just a single click. This feature is still being developed, but it appears that is also considering adding more features, especially for favourite contacts. According to TestFlight, the most recent beta for iOS 24.4.10.76 contained this information. WhatsApp is also working on a chat filter function to help users keep track of their interactions with their favourite friends. The new chat filter will allow users to prioritize and easily access chats with their favourite contacts, so they never miss any important messages. WhatsApp Web will soon receive an update with this feature, so the feature won’t be limited to iOS only. It is anticipated that users managing many conversations would greatly benefit from the a

Gaza truce talks were underway in Paris on Friday, in what appears to be the most serious push for weeks to halt the fighting in the battered Palestinian enclave and see Israeli and foreign hostages released. A source briefed on the ceasefire talks, who could not be identified by name or nationality, said talks had begun with Israel’s head of Mossad intelligence service meeting separately with each party – Qatar, Egypt and United States. “There are budding signs of optimism about being able to move forward toward the start of a serious negotiation,” the source said. Egypt’s TV News also reported that the talks had begun. An official from Hamas said the militant group had wrapped up ceasefire talks in Cairo and was now waiting to see what mediators bring back from the weekend talks with Israel. Mediators have ramped up efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, in the hope of heading off an Israeli assault on the Gaza city of Rafah where more than a million displaced people are shelte

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently hosting a pivotal six-day hearing regarding Israel's 57-year illegal occupation of Palestine. The high-profile event has attracted significant attention from around the world, with 12 countries, including Pakistan and Great Britain, providing legal arguments on the Israeli occupation during the fifth day of proceedings. Caretaker Law Minister Ahmed Irfan Aslam is representing Pakistan, underscoring the nation's commitment to advocating for the rights of Palestinians. A total of 52 countries and three human rights organizations are actively participating in the hearing, signalling widespread international interest and concern regarding the situation in Palestine. Minister Aslam has articulated Pakistan's unwavering support for the self-determination of Palestinians, advocating for their freedom and the establishment of a two-state solution. He stressed that the ICJ should issue an opinion on the illegal Israeli occup

France has introduced a four-year talent visa to attract skilled foreign workers to live and work in the country, Y-Axis reported. The visa is designed for highly qualified and skilled non-EU workers who can play their part in the development of France’s economy. The salary requirement will range from the legal minimum wage to 1.8 times the amount for workers in innovative projects and those with national or international reputations. The programme, known as Talent Passport, will allow spouses and children of visa holders to apply for multi-year residence permits. Those considered eligible for the programme include skilled researchers and artists in academia, science, literature, the arts, sports, and education. Additionally, entrepreneurs who invest a minimum of €30,000 in the country are also eligible, provided they meet specific qualifications, such as holding a Master’s degree or five years of relevant experience. While French authorities had tightened the language proficie

A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the moon’s south pole on Thursday, the first US touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector. NASA, with several research instruments aboard the vehicle, hailed the landing as a major achievement in its goal of sending a squad of commercially flown spacecraft on scientific scouting missions to the moon ahead of a planned return of astronauts there later this decade. But initial communications problems following Thursday’s landing raised questions about whether the vehicle may have been left impaired or obstructed in some way. The uncrewed six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines’ mission operations center in Houston. The landing capped a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a probl

NASA has issued a stark warning in light of powerful solar flares that pose a significant risk to communication systems both in space and here on Earth. The aerospace agency reported a formidable flare that peaked at 5:34 p.m. EST on February 22, 2024, measuring an astonishing X6.3 on the solar activity scale. Solar flares, classified into five categories ranging from A to X, with X-class flares being the most intense, are capable of disrupting various communication systems. This recent event marks the largest flare recorded since 2017, ranking as the 27th most powerful flare in recorded history. Preceding this formidable X6.3 event, there were notable flares, including an X1.8 on Wednesday and an X1.7 earlier on Thursday. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) cautioned that such events could result in temporary signal degradation or complete loss for operators of high-frequency radios, particularly on the sunlit side of the planet during the flare's o

Britain’s Trident nuclear-deterrent system misfired during a test last month, sending a missile crashing into the ocean off the Florida coast near the submarine that launched it, The Sun newspaper reported on Wednesday. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that an “anomaly” had occurred during the test but said Britain’s “nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure and effective”. With Defence Secretary Grant Shapps on board the HMS Vanguard to witness the test, The Sun said, the first-stage boosters on the missile – equipped with dummy warheads – failed to ignite. The result marked the second successive test failure of a Trident missile after one was reported to have veered off course in 2016, an embarrassing outcome for a country that once boasted the largest and most powerful naval force in the world. “It left the submarine but it just went plop, right next to them,” The Sun quoted an unspecified source as saying. In a statement, Shapps said that the missile test had been the culmina

Despite significant progress in developing AI systems that can understand the physical world like humans do, researchers have struggled with modeling a certain aspect of our visual system: the perception of light. "Determining the influence of light in a given photograph is a bit like trying to separate the ingredients out of an already baked cake," explains Chris Careaga, a Ph.D. student in the Computational Photography Lab at SFU. The task requires undoing the complicated interactions between light and surfaces in a scene. This problem is referred to as intrinsic decomposition, and has been studied for nearly half a century. In a new paper published in the journal ACM Transactions on Graphics, researchers in the Computational Photography Lab, at Simon Fraser University, develop an AI approach to intrinsic decomposition that works on a wide range of images. Their method automatically separates an image into two layers: one with only lighting effects and one with the true

At least 23 people have died in central Venezuela after a wall of earth collapsed at an illegally operated gold mine while dozens of people were at work. Yorgi Arciniega, a local official, told the AFP news agency on Wednesday that about 23 bodies had been recovered from the open-pit mine known as Bulla Loca in the jungles of the state of Bolivar. Deputy Minister of Civil Protection Carlos Perez Ampueda published a video of the incident on X, and referred to “a massive” toll, though he provided no numbers. The video showed a wall of earth slowly collapsing upon people at work in the shallow waters of an open-pit mine. Some managed to flee while others were engulfed. Some 200 people were thought to have been working in the mine, which is a seven-hour boat ride from the nearest town, La Paragua, according to officials. Edgar Colina Reyes, the Bolivar state’s secretary of citizen security, said the injured were being transported to a hospital in the regional capital Ciudad Bolivar

The scale of tragedy in Gaza has been "deliberately downplayed," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday. "The scale of the tragedy in Gaza has been deliberately belittled, where in less than five months more civilians, including children and women, were killed than on both sides in Donbas in the 10 years since the unconstitutional coup in Kyiv," Lavrov said, speaking at a G20 ministerial meeting in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro. The minister noted that G20 will hardly find solutions to the accumulated challenges and threats to global security. He also invited the world's leading economies to clearly declare their refusal to use economics as a weapon and war as an investment, to demonstrate their commitment to open and equitable trade and economic cooperation. "It is important to confirm that global banks and funds should not finance militaristic goals and aggressive regimes, but needy countries in the interests of sustainable developmen

In a significant development for Türkiye’s defence capabilities, the National Combat Aircraft KAAN has completed its maiden flight, marking a historic moment for the nation. The President of the Defence Industry Agency (SSB) Türkiye, Prof. Dr. Haluk Görgün, expressed immense pride in this achievement, hailing it as a pivotal step towards realising President Erdogan’s vision for the country’s defence sector. TFX Kaan brings Türkiye to the elite league of 5th Gen fighter jets manufacturers. Coordinated by the Presidency of Defense Industries and executed by Turkish Aerospace Industries, KAAN completed various tests before its flight, including ejection seat and control surface tests, Turkish media reported. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he wrote, “We have engraved another development in our history, which will be one of the milestones of the locality and nationality vision that our President Mr. Erdogan drew for our country in the defence industry. Thank God”. The successful ma

Indian police fired tear gas on Wednesday to scatter protesting farmers as they resumed a march to the capital, equipped with cranes and excavators after talks with the government on guaranteed prices for their produce failed to break a deadlock. To escape the stinging gas and clouds of smoke, thousands of farmers, some wearing medical masks, ran into the fields surrounding their gathering-point on a highway about 200 km north of New Delhi. The police action came as the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a fresh offer to resume talks on the farmers’ demands. Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda urged the farmers to resolve their grievances through the talks. “After the fourth round, the government is ready to discuss all the issues” such as guaranteed prices, he posted on social network X, as the march resumed. “I again invite the farmer leaders for discussion. It is important for us to maintain peace.” On Monday, the farmers’ groups had rejected the government’s previo

The United States is set to announce new sanctions against Russia over the death of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and the two-year war in Ukraine. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden did not give details but said he would provide more information about the package of measures on Friday, ahead of the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. According to international media reports, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said that the “major sanctions package” would hold Russia “accountable” for what happened to Navalny and respond to the “vicious and brutal war that has now raged on for two years”. The new sanctions will target a range of items, including Russia’s defence and industrial bases, along with sources of revenue for the economy, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said. According to a senior US official, a sanctions package was already being planned to mark the second anniversary of the war, which Washingt

Israel has denied access to more than half of the missions planned by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and its humanitarian partners to deliver aid in the northern Gaza Strip since the start of the year, the agency said Tuesday. ''Since the start of 2024, 51% of the missions planned by UNRWA and humanitarian partners to deliver aid and undertake assessments to areas in north Gaza this year were denied access by Israeli authorities,'' the agency said on X. ''Food insecurity north of Wadi Gaza has reached an extremely critical state,'' it added. The agency said on Nov. 17 last year that residents in northern Gaza were "on the brink of famine." Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas in October, in which nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed. The death toll from Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip has jumped to 29,195, the Palestinian Health Ministry sa