World

UNITED NATIONS:  Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has expressed doubts about his efficacy in enabling talks between India and Pakistan but said he hoped that given their importance they would enter into a meaningful dialogue.

WASHINGTON:  Former US President George W. Bush delivered pizzas to his unpaid Secret Service personnel and called for the partial government shutdown to end.

WASHINGTON:  Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office has disputed a BuzzFeed News story as "not accurate", after the outlet reported that President Donald Trump had directed his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress.

BEIJING:  China will launch 90 satellites into space for Argentinian company Satellogic, which plans to build an Earth observation network.

ISLAMABAD: Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa, who part of the Supreme Court benches that disqualified former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from politics and overturned the death penalty of a Christian woman jailed for blasphemy, was sworn in as the 26th Chief Justice of Pakistan on Friday.

RABAT: The adoption by the European Parliament by an overwhelming majority of the Moroccan-EU Agriculture Agreement confirms that "any agreement covering the Moroccan Sahara can only be negotiated and signed by the Kingdom in the exercise of its full sovereignty over this part of its territory", according to the Moroccan government.

LONDON:  The number of asteroids colliding with the Moon and the Earth was about two to three times higher in the last 290 million years than in the previous 700 million years, finds a study that challenges previous understanding of Earth's history.

MELBOURNE:  Australia's vulnerability to quality leg-spin was exposed by Yuzvendra Chahal, who returned with his second overseas fifer to help India restrict the hosts for a megre 230 in the series-deciding third ODI at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) here on Friday.

ISLAMABAD: Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa took oath as the 26th Chief Justice of Pakistan at a ceremony here on Friday.

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has ruled out any role for India in the Afghan peace process, the media reported on Friday.

PARIS:  French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has said a no-deal Brexit looks "less and less unlikely" and has launched a contingency plan to prepare for it.

WASHINGTON:  One of North Korea's top negotiators has arrived in Washington to meet US officials ahead of a possible second summit between Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has cancelled his delegations trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, due to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

SAN FRANCISCO:  The partial shutdown of the US federal government has had a serious impact on the country's space agency NASA and development work on most future space missions has been slowed or suspended.

LONDON:  British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday called on MPs to "put self-interest aside" and "work constructively together" to find a way forward for Brexit, following her slim victory in a no-confidence vote.

WASHINGTON:  Kim Yong-chol, North Korea's lead negotiator in nuclear talks with the US, is expected to arrive in Washington on Thursday, according to informed sources.

NEW YORK:  Raising the stakes in the US government shutdown standoff, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blocked President Donald Trump from delivering the highly symbolic annual State of the Union address to the joint session of Congress even as a group of centrist Democrat and Republican lawmakers met him to find a way out of the impasse.

NAIROBI: The death toll in Tuesday's attack on a luxury hotel complex in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi has increased to 21, police have confirmed.

WASHINGTON:  US President Donald Trump has called tens of thousands of federal employees back to work without pay to get the government running amid a partial shutdown well into its third week.

MOSCOW:  Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he is ready for a "serious conversation" with the US on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty issue despite Washington's declared intention to withdraw from the pact.