AFP: This year, the Saudis have launched a “smart hajj” initiative, with apps to help pilgrims with everything from travel plans to medical care. Asefny, for example, is an app launched by Saudi Arabia’s Red Crescent to help pilgrims request emergency medical attention. Authorities are able to locate those in need through the app. The…
The Guardian, UK: China’s military has expanded its bomber operations in recent years while “likely training for strikes” against the United States and its allies, a Pentagon report released on Thursday has said. The assessment was contained in an annual report that highlighted China’s efforts to increase its global influence, with defence spending that the…
The Guardian, UK: A 16-year-old boy hacked into Apple’s mainframe, downloaded internal files and accessed customer accounts because he was a fan of the company and hoped to work there one day, a Melbourne court has heard. According to The Age newspaper, the boy’s lawyer told the children’s court in Melbourne on Thursday that his…
Reuters: Several ministries in Japan may have been inflating for decades the number of disabled people they employ in order to meet quotas, media said on Friday, even as the government imposes levies on private companies that fail to meet theirs. Revelations of any falsification by ministries could undermine public trust in Japan, where manufacturers…
RTE: A Chinese passenger jet slid off the runway as it landed at Manila airport in torrential rain, authorities said, with all 165 people on board safely evacuated. The Xiamen Airlines aircraft, carrying 157 passengers and eight crew, landed on its second attempt before skidding onto the grass and ripping off its left engine, airport…
Desk Report: Wife of former commanding officer of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) Lt Col Hasinur Rahman today pleaded to the prime minister for directing law enforcers to find her husband, who has remained traceless for over a week, reports the daily star. “Please bring my husband back. He [Hasniur] is innocent and not involved with…
Reuters: Captain Joe Fontana, a team leader with the U.S. army’s 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, is part of a new unit but he is working on problems that have been stubbornly familiar to American military advisers in Afghanistan for years. The 1st SFAB was formed last year as a new force of experienced…
Reuters: Aid agency Médecins Sans Frontières, working in Cox’s Bazar at the southern tip of Bangladesh, estimated in the first month of violence, beginning at the end of August 2017, that at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed. But the survey, in what is now the largest refugee camp in the world, was limited to the…
M Humayun Kabir: BNP termed Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s comment ‘absurd and imprudent’ involving its chairperson Khaleda Zia in the August-15 carnage conspiracy. “Our self-declared Prime Minister used to see the ghost of Zia family and BNP everywhere. Otherwise, how could you involve Khaleda Zia and Ziaur Rahman in the 1975 incident? You’re making unguarded…
Hossen Sohel: Former Pakistan ba-tsman Nasir Jamshed has been banned for 10 years by an anti-corruption for his part in the spot-fixing scandal that overtook the Pakistan Super League in 2017. Jamshed, who played 48 ODIs and two Tests, was suspended from all forms of cricket in February 2017 for violating the PCB’s anti-corruption code…