Kabul, Nov 21: A suicide bomber blew himself up in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people, three government officials said.
Najib Danish, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said more than 70 other people were injured in the attack.
“A suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a wedding hall where Islamic religious scholars had gathered to commemorate the birthday of Prophet Mohammad,” Danish said.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the blast.
Islamabad, Jun 3: Pakistan has reported a record 4,132 fresh cases of the coronavirus in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of infections to 80,463, the health ministry said on Wednesday.
The Ministry of National Health and Services said the new infections were detected after conducting a maximum of 17,370 tests in a day.
Of the total cases, Sindh has so far detected 31,086 patients of the coronavirus, Punjab 29,489, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 10,897, Balochistan 4,747, Islamabad 3,188, Gilgit-Baltistan 779 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reported 289 patients of the viral disease.
"In total 67 patients died in the last 24 hours, taking the tally of deaths to 1,688. Another 28,923 people have fully recovered from the disease," the ministry said in a statement.
The authorities have so far carried out 595,344 tests in the country.
Officials said that Pakistan has more than 100 labs that can conduct over 30,000 tests per day and the number of daily tests will be gradually increased to the maximum level.
New York, Jan 11: The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Friday renewed a six-year-long cross-border humanitarian aid deliveries mechanism into Syria.
According to Sputnik, the Security Council voted in favour of a resolution on Friday that allows cross border deliveries to be conducted via Turkey, preserving two checkpoints and excluding the Al-Yarubiyah border crossing with Iraq and the Al-Ramtha crossing with Jordan, until July 10, 2020.
Russia proposed to amend the adopted resolution by replacing a part of the draft which stipulates that humanitarian assistance into Syria should be delivered based on the principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence by the phrase that such aid should be provided "in accordance with the guiding principles of humanitarian emergency assistance, as contained in UNGA resolution 46/182."
The agreement was reached after Belgium and Germany decided to amend the original version of their joint resolution, which proposed keeping three points for cross-border deliveries into the Arab republic.
In December last year, the United Nations had said that over 235,000 people fled the Idlib region in the last two weeks after Russia and Syria launched airstrikes in a bid to take over the last major opposition bastion.
Russia backed Syria government launched a fresh assault to capture the province.
Syrian Bashar al-Assad regime, backed by Iran, has reportedly promised to take back the rebel-controlled area and broke a ceasefire that was announced in August.
They have since December 19 seized dozens of towns and villages from armed fighters amid clashes that have killed hundreds on both sides.
Washington, Jul 15: The Trump administration has agreed to rescind its July 6 rule, which temporarily barred international students from staying in the United States unless they attend at least one in-person course, a federal district court judge said on Tuesday.
The U-turn by the Trump administration comes following a nationwide outrage against its July 6 order and a series of lawsuits filed by a large number of educational institutions, led by the prestigious Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), seeking a permanent injunctive relief to bar the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from enforcing the federal guidelines barring international students attending colleges and universities offering only online courses from staying in the country.
As many as 17 US states and the District of Columbia, along with top American IT companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, joined MIT and Harvard in the US District Court in Massachusetts against the DHS and the ICE in seeking an injunction to stop the entire rule from going into effect.
"I have been informed by the parties that they have come to a resolution. They will return to the status quo," Judge Allison Burroughs, the federal district judge in Boston, said in a surprise statement at the top of the hearing on the lawsuit.
The announcement comes as a big relief to international students, including those from India. In the 2018-2019 academic year, there were over 10 lakh international students in the US. According to a recent report of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), 1,94,556 Indian students were enrolled in various academic institutions in the US in January.
Judge Burroughs said the policy would apply nationwide.
"Both the policy directive and the frequently asked questions would not be enforced anyplace," she said, referring to the agreement between the US government and MIT and Harvard.
Congressman Brad Scneider said this is a great win for international students, colleges and common sense.
"The Administration needs to give us a plan to tackle our public health crisis - it can't be recklessly creating rules one day and rescinding them the next," he said in a tweet.
Last week, more than 136 Congressmen and 30 senators wrote to the Trump administration to rescind its order on international students.
"This is a major victory for the students, organisers and institutions of higher education in the #MA7 and all across the country that stood up and fought back against this racist and xenophobic rule," said Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.
"Taking online classes shouldn't force international students out of our country," Congressman Mikie Sherrill said in a tweet.
In its July 6 notice, the ICE had said all student visa holders, whose university curricula were only offered online, "must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status".
"If not, they may face immigration consequences, including but not limited to the initiation of removal proceedings," it had said.
In their lawsuit, the 17 states and the District of Columbia said for many international students, remote learning in the countries and communities they come from would impede their studies or be simply impossible.
The lawsuit alleged that the new rule imposes a significant economic harm by precluding thousands of international students from coming to and residing in the US and finding employment in fields such as science, technology, biotechnology, healthcare, business and finance, and education, and contributing to the overall economy.
In a separate filing, companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, along with the US Chamber of Commerce and other IT advocacy groups, asserted that the July 6 ICE directive will disrupt their recruiting plans, making it impossible to bring on board international students that businesses, including the amici, had planned to hire, and disturb the recruiting process on which the firms have relied on to identify and train their future employees.
The July 6 directive will make it impossible for a large number of international students to participate in the CPT and OPT programmes. The US will "nonsensically be sending...these graduates away to work for our global competitors and compete against us...instead of capitalising on the investment in their education here in the US", they said.
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