PTI, Melbourne
Tightening its visa rules, New Zealand has issued half as many new study visas to Indian students in the past five months as in the same period last year, turning down too many potential students from India.
Between the start of July and the end of October, the country approved 3,102 visas, just 48 per cent of the 6,462 approved in the same period last year.
First cargo train from China leaves for Karachi
Dawn.com, Yunnan
China and Pakistan have launched a direct rail and sea freight service, with the first cargo train departing from Yunnan, an inland province in southwest China, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
A cargo train loaded with 500 tonnes of commodities left Kunming, capital of Yunnan, for Karachi on Wednesday, marking the opening of the new route.
“The route helps locals businesses connect with the world market,” a representative from the New Silk Road Yunnan Limited said.
UK disappointed at UN panel
decision on Assange
AFP, London
The British government voiced disappointment on Thursday after a UN panel rejected its request to review a ruling that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is being arbitrarily detained.
“Julian Assange is not, and has never been, arbitrarily detained in the UK,” junior foreign minister Alan Duncan said in a statement.
Half a million Afghans displaced by war: UN
AFP, Kabul
With daily battles between the government forces and Taliban insurgents, the number of people who have fled their homes for safer parts of Afghanistan has hit a record high, the UN said Wednesday.
As of November 30 more than half a million Afghans – 515,800 people – had been internally displaced by fighting, surpassing a previous record of 471,000 set last year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
The figure has more than doubled since 2014, pointing to a sharp increase in the number of people leaving their homes due to escalating violence in the war-torn country.
