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Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited Azerbaijan in February, and Turkiye only a month ago, in April.

Yet, this week, he was back in both countries, as part of a five-day, four-nation diplomatic blitzkrieg also including stops in Iran and Tajikistan, where Sharif will hold talks on Thursday and Friday. And he isn’t alone: Sharif is being accompanied by Army Chief Asim Munir — recently promoted to Pakistan’s only second-ever field marshal — and Deputy…

Acclaimed photographer Latif al-Ani, born in Baghdad in 1932, is known as the father of Iraqi photography. As the official photographer for presidents and the Iraqi Petroleum Company, his portfolio forms a unique visual archive of Iraq during its heyday from the 1950s to 1970s.

His photos capture the abundance and complexity of a modern and cosmopolitan nation living in peace…

These are the key events on day 1,190 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here’s where things stand on Thursday, May 29:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s military has said it struck several Russian weapons production sites in or around Moscow during a major overnight drone attack, including the Angstrem microchip factory, the Kronstadt plant and the Raduga plant.
• Russia said its air defence units downed three Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow in the early hours of Thursday morning. One of the drones…

UN Office on Drugs and Crime says ‘explosive growth’ in synthetic drug trade led to record seizures of methamphetamine in East and Southeast Asia in 2024.

Drug production and trafficking has surged in the infamous “Golden Triangle“, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned in a new report on the scale of the regional trade in synthetic drugs.

The UNODC said a record 236 tonnes of methamphetamine were seized…

Chinese state media says the mission aims ‘to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids’ and the Earth.

China has successfully launched a spacecraft as part of its first-ever mission to retrieve pristine asteroid samples, in what researchers have described as a “significant step” in Beijing’s ambitions for interplanetary exploration.

China’s Long March 3B rocket lifted off at about 1.31am local time (18:30 GMT) on Thursday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in…