Yangon: A gay Myanmar man posted a note on Facebook including screenshots of alleged homophobic bullying before taking his life, prompting activists...
Moscow: Russia on Monday (June 24) denounced as "illegal" new economic sanctions that the United States is preparing to impose on Iran. "We consider these sanctions illegal," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a briefing.
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have flared since Iranian forces on Thursday shot down a US drone, the latest in a se...
A crowdfunding website has removed a popular rugby player’s page for his homophobic social media posts, besides promising to refund all those who had donated for his cause.
Israel Folau had his $4 million contract terminated last month for his social media posts, in which he said “hell awaits” homosexuals. It was a breach of terms of service, cl...
Beijing: Thirty-one people were injured after a 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit the Gongxian County in southwest China's Sichuan Province on Saturday (June 22), authorities said on Sunday (June 23). The injured were rushed to the hospitals.
Twenty-one of them were hospitalised for observation and treatment, officials of the city of Yibin told media. The qua...
Beijing, China: Huawei has urged India to make an 'informed and independent decision' on permitting its 5G trials in the country as the Chinese telecom giant reeled under pressure following the US ban.
The US has banned Huawei, the world's leader in telecom equipment and the number two smartphone producer, over concerns of security. Washington has been pressuri...
London: The US military is one of the largest climate polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more carbon than most countries, a study claims.
The research suggests that the enormous carbon footprint of the US military must be confronted in order to have a substantial effect on battling global warming. The accounting of majority o...
Honolulu: A skydiving plane crashed and burst into flames just after takeoff from a small seaside airfield on the island of Oahu, killing 11 people, officials said on Saturday (June 22).
Authorities initially reported that nine people died in the crash on Friday (June 21) evening and that three of them were customers of a skydiving company and six were em...
Islamabad: Pakistan on Saturday reiterated its resolve to support efforts to bring peace in the war-torn Afghanistan and clarified that the country was not looking for "strategic depth" in the neighbouring country. Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi made the comments during the inaugural session of a conference - Lahore Process - on Afghan peace h...
Washington: Scientists have developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) system to monitor people for cardiac arrest while they are asleep without touching them.
People experiencing cardiac arrest will suddenly become unresponsive and either stop breathing or gasp for air, a sign known as agonal breathing, said researchers at the University of Washington (U...
Colombo: A state of emergency was extended by Sri Lanka's President on Saturday (June 22), going back on pledges to relax the tough laws introduced after the Easter Sunday attacks that killed 258 people.
Maithripala Sirisena said in a decree he believed there was a 'public emergency' in the country, and was invoking provisions of the public security act ...
Washington: Pakistan has failed to complete its action plan on terror financing, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) said Friday, warning Islamabad to meet its commitment by October or face action, which could possibly lead to the country getting blacklisted.
The Paris-based global body is working to curb terrorism financing and money laundering and has ...
Nine senior Sri Lankan police officials will face criminal investigations for their failure to act on the intelligence warnings, including from India, to prevent the Easter Sunday attacks that killed 258 people.
Attorney General Dappula de Livera directed acting Inspector General of Police Chandana Wickramaratne to conduct the probe against the ...
Washington: President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Iran has made a "very big mistake" by shooting down a US spy drone, an incident that is likely to further escalate already soaring tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Both the US and Iran said that Iranian forces had shot down an American military surveillance drone, but the two sides offered conf...
Beirut: Fighting raged in northwest Syria on Thursday as clashes between regime forces and jihadist-led fighters killed more than 100 combatants in two days, a war monitor said.
The Idlib region, home to around three million people, is supposed to be protected by a month-old international truce deal, but it has come under increased bombardment by the re...
Dubai: A 29-year-old Indian man and his wife have been charged in a court here with physically assaulting his mother, causing her bone and rib fractures, internal bleeding as well as severe burns and unintentionally causing her death, according to a media report.
The man and his 28-year-old wife, whose identity has not been revealed, tortured the elder...
A Syrian refugee in the US was arrested on Wednesday (June 19) on suspicion of planning an attack against a Pennsylvania church in the name of the Islamic State group, the Justice Department said.
Mustafa Mousab Alowemer, 21, who arrived in the country as a refugee from Syria in August 2016, intended to target a church in the North Side neighbor...
Lahore: Two suspected IS terrorists, who were allegedly involved in the abductions of former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilanis son and a US national, were killed by Pakistani security agencies in Punjab province, police said on Thursday.
The terrorists, identified as Muhammad Rizwan and Imran Saqi, were killed in a late night raid on a house in Multan ...
Jakarta: A 6.3-magnitude earthquake hit Papua, in eastern Indonesia on Thursday, US seismologists said, but no tsunami warning was issued. The quake hit about 250 kilometres west of the town of Abepura in Papua province at 12:46 am local time, at a depth of 12 kilometres, according to the US Geological Survey.
The quake was felt weakly in Abepura, but mo...
LUXEMBORG: German sportswear giant Adidas on Wednesday lost a legal battle to trademark its "three stripe" motif in the EU, as a court ruled the design was not distinctive enough to deserve protection.
The three parallel stripes seen adorning everything from running shoes to sports bags and the sleeves of t-shirts are "an ordinary figurative mark", the Gen...
Tokyo: A strong 6.4-magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, sparking a tsunami advisory that was later lifted with no reports on Wednesday of major damage and only a handful of light injuries.
The nations meteorological agency had warned on Tuesday that a wave of one metre (three feet) could hit the coast of the Sea of Japan, north of Tokyo, but only small ...
Orlando: President Donald Trump launched his 2020 reelection campaign on Tuesday, whipping up a crowd of at least 20,000 with a nationalist boast about the US economy being the "envy" of the world and warning that opposition Democrats want to "destroy" the country.
Promising the packed arena in Orlando, Florida an "earthquake at the ballot box," Trump sa...
Islamabad: Pakistan on Tuesday (June 18) signed three loan agreements worth a total of USD 918 million with the World Bank, Prime Minister Imran Khan's adviser on finance has said as the cash-strapped country tries to overcome a ballooning balance-of-payments crisis that threatens to cripple its economy.
The amount will be used to fund three projects — USD...
Washington: An Indian-American IT professional committed suicide by shooting himself while his wife and two minor sons were shot dead inside their home in the US State of Iowa, police said after authorities conducted autopsies to unravel the mysterious death of all four members of the family.
The West Des Moines Police Department, which is probing the case,...
Amidst an escalation of tensions with Iran, the US has approved the deployment of 1,000 additional troops in the Middle East for "defensive purposes" to address air, naval and ground-based threats.
The announcement by Acting US Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan came hours after Iran said it would surpass the uranium-stockpile limit set by its n...
Caracas: Venezuela on Monday (June 17) received a second shipment of Red Cross humanitarian aid, including 24 tonnes of medical supplies and generators provided by Panama, intended for hospitals to help address the country's acute health crisis.
In a statement, the Venezuelan Red Cross said it had received "medicines, medical supplies and power generator...
Former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who was removed from office in 2013 after widespread protests, reportedly died in court. He fainted after a court session, where he was facing espionage charges, and died after that, said a state TV.
Morsi served as the fifth president of Egypt. During his term, he issued a temporary constitutional declar...
What happens if President Donald Trump carries out his threat to impose tariffs on the remaining USD 300 billion in Chinese goods that he hasn't already hit with 25 per cent import taxes?
A New Hampshire fireworks company says it would have to raise prices, likely lose business and force some small towns to cancel their Fourth of July fireworks ...
As lights turned back on across Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay after a massive blackout that hit tens of millions people, authorities were still largely in the dark about what caused the collapse of the interconnected grid and were tallying the damage from the unforeseen disaster.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri promised a thorough investiga...
“There has been a significant increase in the popularity of yoga in the United States after the United Nations in 2014 declared June 21 as the ‘International Day of Yoga’,” India’s Ambassador to the US Harsh Vardhan Shringla said.
Addressing hundreds of yoga enthusiasts at the National Monument here on Sunday morning, Shringla said, “Yoga has be...
Phoenix: The mayor of Phoenix apologised on Sunday after videos emerged showing police in the southwestern US city violently arresting a family of colour with young children.
The videos, shot when the arrest happened last month, show police using foul language while shouting at the family to get out of their car, and threatening to shoot them.
A woman...
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accused rival Iran of attacks on two oil tankers in a vital Gulf shipping channel. He "wont hesitate" to tackle any threats to the kingdom, according to excerpts of an interview.
"The Iranian regime did not respect the presence of the Japanese prime minister as a guest in Tehran and responded to his (diplom...
A powerful earthquake of 7.2 magnitude on the richter scale struck near the Kermadec Islands New Zealand on Sunday. This briefly prompted a tsunami warning.
After initially forecasting "a threat to beach, harbour, estuary and small boat activities", New Zealands Civil Defence organisation gave the all-clear eight minutes later.
The earthquake w...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who recently met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit at Bishek, have agreed to expedite dialogue on the India-China border dispute to find a “fair” solution to the almost intractable problem. Considering China is India’s largest trade partner since 2013 the two neighbours al...
Calling Iran "a nation of terror", President Donald Trump on Friday publicly accused the Persian Gulf nation of responsibility for recent attacks on oil tankers near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Trump said Irans culpability was "exposed" by the United States. While calling into Fox News Channels "Fox & Friends," he said of the Thursday at...
Colombo: Five suspects linked to the Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka have been repatriated from the UAE, police said on Friday (June 14).
The suspects also include Mohamed Milhan, a prominent member of the banned terror outfit National Thawheed Jamath (NTJ) that was responsible for the attacks. Milhan was also listed as a terror suspect in the Intel...
London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is expected to appear at hearing in a London court via video link as he continues his fight against extradition to the United States.
The 47-year-old Assange is currently in Belmarsh Prison on the outskirts of London serving a 50-week sentence for jumping bail in Britain. He was too ill to appear at a recent hear...
London: UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid confirmed on Thursday (June 13) that he has signed an order following a request from the US government to extradite Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange to face charges of computer hacking before the American courts.
The senior Pakistani-origin minister said the decision now lay with the UK courts to analyse if the c...
Indian energy giant Adani on Thursday cleared the last regulatory hurdle to commence the work on its controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine project in Australia with the Queensland state authorities approving its groundwater management plan.
The final and last approval for the Adani Groups long-delayed billion dollar mega coal mine project came we...
The United States expressed grave concern over proposed amendments to Hong Kong laws that would allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China, warning that such a move could undermine the territory's autonomy and negatively impact its longstanding protection of human rights.
Under the amended law, those accused of offences punishable by seve...
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that his visit to New Delhi this month will focus on advancing the "incredibly important" ties with India . It is a significant part of US President Donald Trump's strategy in the Indo-Pacific region.
Pompeo will leave for New Delhi on June 24. In his week long visit to the Indo-Pacific region, Delhi will b...
Islamabad: Pakistan’s former president Asif Ali Zardari was arrested on Monday (June 10) from his residence here in the fake bank accounts case by the country’s top anti-corruption body, officials said.
A National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team accompanied by police, including female officials, entered the PPP co-chairman’s house in F-8 sector here after...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Sri Lanka's top leadership including President Maithripala Sirisena Sunday (June 9) and the two sides agreed that terrorism is a "joint threat" that needs collective and focussed action, weeks after the island nation witnessed the worst jihadi attack.
Modi is the first foreign leader to visit Sri Lanka after the ...
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday visited a church - one of the sites of the horrific Easter Sunday attacks - soon after his arrival here and paid tributes to the victims of the terror strikes, expressing India's affirmation of solidarity with Sri Lanka in the wake of the attacks.
"Started the Sri Lanka visit by paying my respect at one of ...
Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Sri Lanka on Sunday on the second leg of his first foreign visit after re-election to strengthen the bilateral ties with the island nation, reflecting the importance India attaches to its Neighbourhood First policy.
Modi was received by his Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe at the Bandaranaike Intern...
Dubai: The mortal remains of 11 Indians killed in a horrific road accident in Dubai were repatriated on Sunday (June 9) while the body of a 22-year-old Indian was cremated here in the Gulf Emirate, an official said.
Twelve Indians were among 17 people killed in Dubai on Thursday (June 6) when a bus, mostly with Eid vacationers coming from Oman, entered...
India and the Maldives plan to launch a ferry service between Kochi and the Maldivian capital Male. It will be a passenger-cum-cargo service to strengthen connectivity between the two countries and boost tourism.
The initiative was announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-day state visit to Maldives. A Memorandum of Understanding was ...
Democrat Kamala Harris played up her experience as a prosecutor on Saturday, telling a mostly black crowd in South Carolina that her prosecutorial credentials have given her a window in helping to improve the criminal justice system and also make her uniquely qualified to take on President Donald Trump.
"We've got to hold this guy accountable by...
The world's top finance policymakers on Sunday weighed the impact of ballooning trade tensions on the global economy amid differences over the extent to which they are dragging on growth.
Finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the G20 group of the world's top economies are expected to note the "downside risks" to the global economy from ...
Hillary Clinton says there are two inescapable conclusions of special counsel Robert Mueller's report. The first is that Russia conducted a sweeping and systemic interference into the 2016 election and the second is that obstruction of justice occurred. "You cannot read the report, chapter and verse, fact after fact, without reaching those conclusi...
British police on Saturday released five teenagers who were arrested following a homophobic attack on a lesbian couple who refused to kiss for a gang of youths on a London night bus.
Melania Geymonat, 28, said she and her girlfriend Chris were robbed and left covered in blood after the incident on a bus in the north of the British capital last w...
Uma Maheswaran, leader of Sri Lankan militant group PLOTE, dispatched nearly 80 armed mercenaries to launch an operation to remove the Maldivian president
PM Modi's visit to the Maldives and Sri Lanka appears to be the first steps of the newly-re-elected government to disentangle the South Asian neighbourhood from China
London: Theresa May had a mission to fight Britain's "burning injustices" through strong and stable leadership — but her legacy as prime minister will be anything but.
The Conservative premiers turbulent time in office was swamped and ultimately sunk by her legacy-defining battle to secure a Brexit divorce deal. It eroded her authority and led to her an...
Honolulu: Lourdes Leon Guerrero vigorously defended abortion rights as she campaigned to become the first female Governor of Guam. She won the campaign but now no doctors are willing to perform the procedure she fought so hard to defend.
The last abortion provider in the heavily Catholic US territory retired in May 2018. That is forcing women seeking to e...
London: Moons orbiting planets outside our solar system may contain liquid water necessary for extra-terrestrial life, according to a study. Exoplanets are planets outside our solar system and nearly 4,000 have been discovered till now, said researchers at the University of Lincoln in the UK.
Only a small proportion of these are likely to be able to sus...
Kathmandu: Two people were killed and at least 99 others are injured after a strong wind storm hit several places in Nepal's far-western Sudurpaschim province, according to a media report.
The storm hit areas in the two adjoining districts of Kailali and Kanchanpur districts on Thursday (June 6), damaging hundreds of houses. Roads were blocked as trees and...
Dubai: At least 12 Indians were among the 17 people killed in a horrific bus accident in Dubai when the vehicle coming from Oman rammed into a low-clearance sign, police and the Indian mission said on Friday (June 7).
Nine persons were seriously injured when the driver of the bus belonging to the Omani bus transport company Mwasalat, wrongly entered a ...
The United Nations is in the middle of a deep financial crisis, owing to the failure of several donor countries including the United States and Japan in making their promised contributions to the international agency.
The crisis in turn has affected countries Troop Contributing Countries (TCC) like India which are yet to be reimbursed for the ex...
London: British Prime Minister Theresa May steps down as leader of her Conservative Party on Friday (June 7), formally triggering the race for a successor who will try where she failed to deliver Brexit.
May will remain prime minister until a new leader is chosen, likely in late July, but has relinquished control over the direction of Britains tortuous ...
Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will briefly visit Sri Lanka on Sunday (June 9) during which he will hold discussions with President Maithripala Sirisena, according to the president's office.
Modi will be the first foreign leader to visit the island nation after the Easter bombings that killed over 250 people, including 11 Indians. This will be Mod...
Dubai: At least eight Indians were among the 17 people killed when a tourist bus rammed into a signboard here, the Indian Consulate said on Friday (June 7).
Nine persons were seriously injured when the driver of the bus, bearing an Omani number plate, wrongly entered a road not designated for buses towards Al Rashidiya metro station here on Thursday (J...
Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday (June 5) appointed Amir Ohana as acting Justice minister, the first openly gay minister in the country's history.
The appointment of Ohana, from Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party, comes as Jerusalem prepares for its annual Gay Pride celebrations on Thursday. "Amir Ohana is a jurist who know...
Islamabad: In an unprecedented voluntary move, Pakistan's military has decided to cut the defence budget for the next fiscal year amid an austerity drive launched by the government to solve the cash-strapped nation's economic woes.
Major General Asif Ghafoor, Director General (DG) Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR) -- the media wing of the military, in...
London: US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (June 5) he decided to ban transgender Americans from serving in the military because they take a "massive amounts of drugs".
Trump told Britain's ITV television in a wide-ranging interview that the military had strict rules regulating the use of prescription drugs.
"They take massive amounts of dru...
Paris: Train passengers were stuck for six hours in a tunnel outside Paris on Tuesday (May 5) after their high-speed service suffered a power cut just minutes after departure, leaving them in sweltering heat, without electricity or working toilets.
The train bound for Barcelona became trapped in the tunnel in the Yerres area outside Paris. French rail ...
London: US President Donald Trump said he wanted a "very, very substantial trade deal" between the US and the UK after Brexit, during a meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May in London on Tuesday (June 4), even as protesters chanted anti-Trump slogans nearby.
Trump addressed a breakfast meeting with business chiefs alongside May at the start of the sec...
Manila: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has sparked outrage after claiming that he "cured" himself of being gay with the help of beautiful women.
Duterte is notorious for his foul-mouthed speeches that include insults, threats to perceived enemies and references to rape that he casts as jokes.
The latest unfiltered comments came during an appear...
Beirut: A car bomb killed at least 13 people on Sunday night (June 2) near a mosque in a northern town held by Turkey-backed fighters, and wounded dozens of people, Syrian opposition activists said.
The blast in the town of Azaz occurred Sunday as scores of people were leaving the mosque of Maytam, wounding dozens including children, according to the Br...
New Delhi/Berne: Amid a continuing crackdown on Swiss bank account holders with suspected illicit money, Switzerland has stepped up its process to share details of such individuals with Potluri Rajamohan Rao being the latest Indian national to get a notice in this regard.
At least 14 Indians, with accounts in Switzerland-based banks, were issued notices by the S...
Beijing: Chinese social media is abuzz with netizens claiming to have spotted an unidentified flying object (UFO) across multiple provinces of China when the Navy was conducting military exercises, official media reported on June 2 (Sunday).
China conducted naval exercises in the Bohai Sea and Bohai Straits on Saturday and Sunday.
Amid the naval exerc...
London: Britain should go for a no-deal Brexit with the EU and refuse to pay the agreed 39 billion pounds ($50 billion) divorce bill, US President Donald Trump told The Sunday Times newspaper on the eve of a visit to London.
The comments by America's outspoken leader came after he told The Sun newspaper he thought former foreign secretary Boris Johnson ...
Beijing: Twitter has apologised for suspending a number of accounts critical of China, days before the politically sensitive 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
The apology came after activists said hundreds of Twitter accounts critical of Communist Party — from "inside and outside" China — were suspended last week. Despite being blocked ...
Beirut: Israel carried out air strikes in Syria on Sunday (Junae 2) in response to rare rocket fire from the neighbouring country, its military said, with a war monitor reporting 10 killed including Syrian soldiers and foreign fighters.
Israels army said two rockets were fired from Syria at Mount Hermon in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights late Saturda...
Los Angeles: Pop star Taylor Swift has written a letter to show her support of the Equality Act, the bill that extends civil rights protections to gay and transgender Americans.
The singer posted the letter, addressed to Tennessee's Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, asking him to protect the rights of the LGBTQ community and support the Equality Act.
"I...
Washington: Nearly all applicants of US visa's will have to provide information on their use of social media under the new rules adopted to enhance vetting of foreign nationals seeking entry into America.
The State Department adopted a new policy on Saturday (June 1) under which most visa applicants, including temporary visitors, will be required to list th...
Kabul: One person was killed and 17 others wounded on Sunday (June 2) in three successive blasts in Kabul, Afghan officials said, capping a murderous week of mayhem across the city.
Among the wounded was an Afghan journalist who appeared to have been live-streaming the aftermath of the first explosion when a second bomb went off. The events started wit...
Syria: Ten people were killed and 20 wounded on Saturday in a suicide car bomb attack in Raqa, a former stronghold of the Islamic State group (IS) in north Syria, a rights watchdog said.
The explosion claimed the lives of five civilians and five soldiers of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-Arab alliance backed by Washington which wrested t...
Washington: US President Donald Trump has terminated India's designation as a beneficiary developing nation from June 5, ending the country's $5.6 billion trade concessions under the key GSP programme after determining that it has not assured the US that it will provide "equitable and reasonable access" to its markets.
The Generalised System of Preference (...
Beijing: Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi has congratulated S Jaishankar on his appointment as India's External Affairs Minister and praised his positive contributions to the development of bilateral ties and expressed readiness to work with him to achieve new progress in China-India relations.
Nearly 16 months after he retired as In...
Singapore: The US is increasing the scope, complexity and frequency of its military engagements with India, now a Major Defence Partner, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said on Saturday (June 1).
Defence cooperation and peacekeeping are two key areas of the rapidly growing US-India partnership as envisioned in the Trump administration's Indo-Paci...
Washington: For the first time since the 1970s, the United States is planning to send equipment to the surface of the Moon in 2020 and 2021, in anticipation of a crewed lunar mission in 2024, NASA has said.
The US space agency has chosen American firms Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and Orbit Beyond to send instruments and other scientific equipment to the ...
Washington: A disgruntled veteran public utilities employee stormed a government building in the US State of Virginia and fired indiscriminately on multiple floors at his co-workers, killing at least 12 people and wounding six others, police said on Saturday (May 31), in the latest incident of mass shooting in the country.
The gunman was killed when police ...
Backbencher Mark Harper became the 12th Conservative MP to enter the contest to replace British Prime Minister Theresa May, the Daily Telegraph reported
Washington: A 23-year-old Indian national was sentenced to over seven years in federal prison by a US court for his role in an Indian call centre scam involving conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Sharvil Patel, who pleaded guilty to the crime in February this year, was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison on Thursday...
Budapest: Hopes are fading of finding any more survivors from a boat accident on the Danube river in Budapest, with 21 people still missing most of them South Korean tourists. Police and army boats continued the search operations on Firday (May 31) but their work has been hampered by high river levels and a strong current after weeks of heavy rainfall.
Th...
Los Angeles: The Jonas Brothers are set to release a tell-all memoir, Blood, which will hit the shelves on November 12.
The book is the first stint of the band, comprising Kevin, Joe and Nick, writing, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It was announced on Tuesday that the Grammy-nominated trio have signed a book deal with Macmillan imprint Feiwel and Frie...
Budapest: Seven people were confirmed dead and 21 remained missing after a sightseeing boat carrying 33 South Korean passengers and two crew members collided with another vessel and sank in the Danube River in downtown Budapest on early Thursday (May 30).
Rescue officials said seven bodies had been recovered. Pal Gyorfi, spokesman for the National Ambulan...
Jerusalem: In an unprecedented development, Israeli lawmakers have voted to dissolve Parliament after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government before midnight deadline, triggering a fresh general election which will be held on September 17.
In little more than six weeks since they were elected, Israeli lawmakers voted 74-45 i...
India is a "great ally" and "partner" of the US and the Trump administration will work closely with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his second term on a range of issues, a senior state department official said on Tuesday (May 29).
State department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus also said that secretary of state Mike Pompeo was looking forward to ha...
London: Five of the seven members of the senior leadership team of Amnesty International are leaving the leading human rights organisation after an independent review said it had a "toxic" workplace, the British media reported on Tuesday.
London-based Amnesty's Secretary-General Kumi Naidoo ordered an independent review after two employees killed themse...
Chennai: As countries across the world mull steps to curb mobile gaming addiction (some going to the extent of implementing bans on certain games), the World Health Organisation (WHO) has officially recognised gaming disorder as an illness.
Video-gaming is a popular source of entertainment for the youth and since the emergence of smartphones in India, th...
Kathmandu: Ameesha Chauhan, a survivor of the Everest “traffic jam” who is in hospital recovering from frostbite, said climbers without basic skills should be barred to prevent a recurrence of this year’s deadly season on the world’s highest peak.
Ten people have died in little more than two weeks after poor weather cut the climbing window, leaving mountai...
Sydney: Sydney on Tuesday (May 28) announced its first major water restrictions in a decade, putting limits on homes and businesses amid a record-breaking drought.
The New South Wales government said the greater Sydney region water catchments were experiencing some of the lowest flows since the 1940s, and that the restrictions would be enforced from nex...
Karachi: Pakistan has tried to downplay India’s decision not to invite Imran Khan for Narendra Modi’s swearing-in on Thursday, saying the Indian Prime Minister’s “internal politics” does not permit him to extend an invitation to his Pakistani counterpart.
The government on Monday announced in New Delhi that it has invited leaders from BIMSTEC countries t...
Rio De Janeiro: At least 42 inmates were killed in clashes in four prisons in northern Brazil on Monday (May 28), authorities said, a day after violence in one of the jail's left 15 people dead.
At least 27 of the victims were in the Antonio Trindade Penal Institute near Manaus, the capital of Amazonas state, where all four prisons are located. The federal gove...
Kawasaki: Two people, including a child, were feared dead on Tuesday (May 28) in a mass stabbing attack that also injured 17 people in Japan, emergency services said.
The rampage was a rare attack in a country with one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the developed world and there was no immediate detail on the motive of the knifeman.
The attack...
Washington: Melting glaciers worldwide could result in almost 10 inches of sea level rise by the end of this century, a study warns.
The research, published in the Journal of Glaciology, indicates that the smaller glaciers could play a much larger role in sea level rise than researchers had previously thought. The review is the most comprehensive global com...
London: Concentrations of antibiotics in some of the world's rivers exceed safe levels by up to 300 times, according to a global study of some of the most iconic water bodies including Thames and Tigris.
Researchers from the University of York in the UK looked for 14 commonly used antibiotics in rivers in 72 countries across six continents and found ant...
Lima: The US Geological Survey says a large earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 8.0 has struck in north-central Peru.
The quake, at a moderate depth of 114 kilometers struck at 2:41 am, 80 kilometers southeast of the village of Lagunas and 158 kilometers east-northeast of the larger town of Yurimaguas.
Earthquakes that are closer to the surf...
Beijing: A theatre stage collapsed during a dance audition, killing one child and injuring 14 others in Zhangzhou city in Chinas Fujian province.
The Jinshuixian theatre in Zhangzhou Development Zone hosted a childrens dance audition on Saturday (May 25) night. During the audition, part of the stage collapsed in which a 13-year-old participant was killed...
British Prime Minister May announces resignation
Theresa May on Friday (May 24) announced that she is quitting as UK Conservative leader on June 7, sparking a contest for Britain's new Prime Minister. She stepped down after failing to win over her ministers with a revised strategy over her plans for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. I...
Three people, including 2 Indians have died on Mount Everest due to ‘traffic jam’, expedition organisers and officials said on Friday, taking the toll to seven.
Nihal Bagwan and Kalpana Das died while descending from heavily traversed Nepal side, while another person, an Australian climber died on the Tibetan side of the mountain.
According t...
London: Theresa May on Friday (May 24) announced that she is quitting as UK Conservative leader on June 7, sparking a contest for Britain's new Prime Minister.
She stepped down after failing to win over her ministers with a revised strategy over her plans for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. It is expected that May, 62, will stay on in Downi...
Washington: Government requests for Facebook user data increased globally by seven per cent in the second half of 2018 with India being on the second spot after the US in the list of nations asking the social networking giant to divulge details, a top executive of the company has said.
California-headquartered Facebook, sharing its latest transparency repor...
Paris: A climber who sparked an evacuation of the Eiffel Tower on Monday (May 20) was grabbed after clinging to the famous Paris landmark for more than six hours, officials said.
The man, who was not immediately identified, "is in the hands of the emergency teams" deployed to the tower, which will reopen to visitors as normal early on Tuesday, the comp...
Naidu briefs Mamata importance of uniting all anti-BJP parties
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu on Monday (May 20) met Kolkata Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at her residence in south Kolkata's Kalighat. According to the sources, they discussed about the possibility of forming a non-BJP government at the Centre comprising regional...
New York: Boeing on Saturday (May 18) acknowledged that it had to correct flaws in its 737 MAX flight simulator software used to train pilots, after two deadly crashes involving the aircraft that killed 346 people. "Boeing has made corrections to the 737 MAX simulator software and has provided additional information to device operators to ensure that the sim...
Colombo: On Saturday (May 18), Sri Lanka, still reeling under the scars of the Easter Sunday bomb blasts, marked 10 years of the end of the nearly brutal civil war between the government and the LTTE, even as it came under criticism for failing to ensure justice for the victims.
The Sri Lankan government on May 18, 2009 killed Liberation Tigers of Tamil ...
New York: Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg on Friday (May 17) said a breakup of big US technology would not address "underlying issues" facing the sector and suggested that such a move could help rivals in China.
Sandberg, interviewed on CNBC television, was asked about the latest calls to break up Facebook and other major Silicon Valley f...
Colombo: India has offered full support to Sri Lanka in dealing with the common threat of "Jihadi terrorism" following the deadly Easter Sunday suicide bombings that killed nearly 260 people, including 11 Indians.
Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu on Friday (May 17) also discussed the prevailing security situation during his rec...
Washington: The United States and Sri Lanka have resolved to work together to foster peace, security and ensure a safe maritime domain in the Indian and Pacific oceans, the two countries said in a joint statement issued Friday.
Both countries have vowed to ensure a rules-based order in the Indian Ocean. The joint statement comes a day after US Secretary of ...
Seoul: North Korea has demanded that United Nations take "urgent measures" to help return a cargo ship taken by the United States, calling the seizure a "heinous" act.
Washington announced last week it had taken possession of the North Korean-registered bulk carrier M/V Wise Honest — a year after it was detained in Indonesia — citing sanctions-violatin...
“Dracarys! Dracarys! Dracarys!” yell writers David Benioff and DB Weiss at the notion of character development, as Arya Stark rides off on a giant metaphor.
This latest and penultimate episode of Game of Thrones has a lot of things to talk about – Queen Daenerys’ 'madness', the death of Cersei, the much awaited Cleganebowl and the white horse.
...
Los Angeles: Britney Spears longtime manager Larry Rudolph has said the singer may never perform again.
Rudolf, whose association with the singer goes back as far as her debut album Baby... One More Time, in 1999, said he wants her to find a "peaceful, happy" place. "I've been with her for two-thirds of her life. I look at her almost like I look at my own da...
Kamal says he called Godse extremist, not terrorist
At the campaign for the Thirupparankundram Assembly bypoll in Tamil Nadu, Kamal Haasan sought to clarify his Godse remark saying he used the Tamil word for extremist rather than terrorist. While campaigning for his party, MNM, in Aravakkurichi on May 12, Kamal Haasan had said, “Independent Ind...
WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app with almost 1.5 million billion users, had a spyware vulnerability that was discovered by the company earlier this month. Since then, the company has asked users to update the app as soon as possible to deal with the hack. But what is this spyware?
What does the spyware do?
The spyware was created by I...
Colombo: Sri Lankan authorities said they have arrested 60 people linked to the communal riots as a nationwide curfew was lifted on Wednesday (May 15) in the island nation, which witnessed Sinhalese mob attacks on Muslim-owned shops and businesses in the aftermath of the deadly Easter blasts.
The government imposed the island-wide curfew on Monday after ...
Islamabad: Amidst a raging controversy over Pakistani girls being trafficked to China after fake marriages, the Chinese embassy here has withheld visas of 90 Pakistani brides, according to a media report.
Chinas Deputy Chief of Mission in Pakistan Lijian Zhao said on Tuesday that 140 applications have been received this year from Chinese nationals, seeking...
A security flaw in WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, allowed attackers to install spyware on phones, the company said on Tuesday (May 14), in the latest trouble for its parent Facebook.
The vulnerability — first reported by the Financial Times, and fixed in the latest WhatsApp update — allowed hackers to insert malic...
Riyadh: OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia said it had stopped pumping crude oil along a major pipeline on Tuesday following a drone attack, hours after Yemen's Huthi rebels said they had targeted vital Saudi installations.
Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said two pumping stations on the pipeline from the oil-rich Eastern Province to the Red Sea had been targete...
The Sri Lankan government has banned three Islamist extremist groups, including the National Thowheeth Jama'ath (NTJ) that carried out the terror attack on Easter Sunday in which over 250 people were killed.
President Maithripala Sirisena issued an extraordinary gazette banning a number of extremist organisations on Monday (May 13). He also proh...
New Delhi: Drug major Aurobindo Pharma on Tuesday (May 14) said various US states have filed a second lawsuit accusing it along with other companies in the US generic drug industry for violating antitrust laws by fixing prices.
"On May 10, 2019, the Attorney General of the State of Connecticut and additional Attorneys' General of various US states filed a ...
Colombo: The Sri Lankan government on Monday (May 13) blocked social media following rising tensions between the minority Muslims and majority Sinhalese in the wake of the Easter Sunday bombings which killed nearly 260 people.
The blockade comes a day after Sri Lankan police imposed curfew in the country's western coastal town of Chilaw where a mob attac...
Terror group ISIS announces new ‘branch’ for India ops
The Islamic State (IS) terror group has claimed to have established a new ‘province’ in India by drawing a link to the clashes between militants and security forces in Kashmir on May 10. The IS reportedly claimed a link to Ishfaq Ahmad Sofi, a militant killed in Kashmir on May 10, Indian Exp...
The Indian Navy cannot ignore the latest development in the Chinese Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) – construction of a third aircraft carrier Type 002 at the Jiangnan shipyard, Shanghai. The PLAN’s second aircraft carrier the Type 001A is a domestically built vessel and presently undergoing sea trials. The third carrier when operational would...
New York: The TIME magazine has featured Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the cover of its international edition with a controversial headline and a secondary one that reads "Modi the Reformer" as the country enters the final phase of the mammoth general election.
The American magazines May 20, 2019 international editions — the Europe, Middle East and Afri...
Kaohsiung (Taiwan): Taiwan broke ground on Thursday (May 9) on a shipyard to produce submarines to counter China's growing military threat.
The self-governing island's President Tsai Ing-wen presided over a ceremony in the southern port city of Kaohsiung, saying submarines were an effective way to deter a foe from surrounding the island by sea.
"We must have con...
New York: Thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers turned off their apps in a US-wide strike on Wednesday (May 8) over pay and working conditions, casting a shadow over this week's keenly anticipated Wall Street debut of ride-hailing leader Uber.
Uber is expected to launch its initial public offering (IPO) on May 10, giving it an estimated valuation of some USD...
Melbourne: People in India, China and other Asian countries are reluctant to use public transport, according to a study which urges urban planners to find ways to overcome this "negative attitude".
Researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia interviewed commuters in several countries including India, China, the US, the Netherlands and A...
Yangon: After relentless diplomatic pressure and global outrage, fallen democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi finally decided that a pardon for two Myanmar journalists jailed for reporting on a Rohingya massacre was the only way to resolve an issue that has dogged her government for nearly 18 months.
Observers say the unexpected release of the two Reuters rep...
Florida: Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed a bill that will allow more classroom teachers to carry guns in school, a response to last years mass shooting at a Parkland high school.
DeSantis signed the bill in private on Wednesday (May 8) and issued no statement. It was one of the more contentious bills of a legislative session that ende...
Seoul: North Korea on Thursday (May 9) described its firing of rocket artillery and an apparent short-range ballistic missile over the weekend as a regular and defensive military exercise and ridiculed South Korea for criticizing the launches.
North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) published a statement by an unnamed military spokesma...
Colombo: The Sri Lankan government has restricted the five-day national Vesak festival celebrations to just two days citing the prevailing security situation in the country following the massive Easter Sunday bombings.
Vesak, the Day of the Full Moon in the month of May, is the most sacred day to millions of Buddhists around the world and this year it wa...
Beijing: China on Wednesday (May 8) called on all parties to uphold the Iranian nuclear pact after Tehran said it would end curbs on its uranium enrichment stockpile unless other powers helped it bypass renewed US sanctions.
"Maintaining and implementing the comprehensive agreement is the shared responsibility of all parties," said Chinese foreign minist...
At least one student was killed when two students opened fire at a Colorado science and technology school. At least seven others were injured, reports in various channels said.
Reports quoted the Douglas County Sheriff's office as saying that deputies heard shots coming from the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) School in Highland...
At least four people were killed and 24 injured in a blast that targeted a police vehicle near the shrine of Data Darbar in Lahore on Wednesday (May 8). Reports said hundreds of pilgrims were at the site to offer their prayers in the month of Ramzan.
Although the nature of the blast is yet to be ascertained, police suspect that it was a suicide ...
Stalin snubs KCR on Federal Front meet, lukewarm to non-Congress grouping
DMK leader MK Stalin is unlikely to meet Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao who is on a mission-mode visit of various states to create a non-BJP, non-Congress front after the elections. The DMK leader may not give KCR an audience as he is reportedly busy with hi...
Pakistan’s Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry was the butt of online trolls for his statement that the Hubble Space Telescope was sent to space by the country’s space agency Suparco.
Chaudhry said this during a show Geo News. According to news reports, he said: “The world’s biggest telescope… was sent by Suparco ”.
“… one of the w...
Yangon: Two Reuters journalists who had been jailed for their reporting on the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar walked out of prison on Tuesday (May 7), freed in a presidential amnesty after a global campaign for their release.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were mobbed by media as they stepped out of Yangon's notorious Insein prison after their lengthy detention. T...
Rovaniemi (Finland): The US on Monday (May 6) said it planned to beef up its Arctic presence to keep Russia's and China's "aggressive behaviour" in check in the resource-rich region.
"The region has become an arena of global power and competition" owing to vast reserves of oil, gas, minerals and fish stocks, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned in a speech in Ro...
CJI Ranjan Gogoi cleared in sexual harassment case
The three-judge in-house committee constituted to probe allegations of sexual harassment against Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has cleared the CJI, said a notice put on the Supreme Court's website. Also, in line with the judgment delivered by the top court in the Indira Jaising case, the ...
Cape Canaveral: A SpaceX shipment arrived at the International Space Station on Monday (May 6) following a weekend launch. The Dragon capsule delivered 5,500 pounds (2,500 kilograms) of equipment and experiments.
Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques used the stations big robot arm also made in Canada to capture the Dragon approximately 400 kilometers above th...
Colombo: Sri Lankan authorities on Monday (May 6) discovered a facility believed to be used as a training centre by the suicide bombers prior to the terror attacks on churches and luxury hotels on the Easter Sunday that killed more than 250 people.
Nine suicide bombers carried out a series of devastating blasts that tore through three churches and three ...
Gaza City: Palestinian leaders in Gaza agreed to a ceasefire with Israel early on Monday (May 6), three officials with knowledge of the talks said, after the most serious flare-up since a 2014 war.
Egypt brokered an agreement to cease hostilities from 4:30 am (0130 GMT) local time, an official from the strip's Islamist rulers Hamas and another from its all...
Hong Kong: President Donald Trump sent Asian markets plunging on May 6 after threatening to hike tariffs on USD 200 billion of Chinese goods at the end of the week in a bid to speed up stuttering trade talks between the economic superpowers. Shanghai and Hong Kong equities led big losses across the region, with the Chinese yuan also taking a battering after t...
Moscow: Forty-one people including at least two children are believed to have died when a Russian passenger plane made an emergency landing and was engulfed in flames at Moscow's busiest airport on Sunday (May 5), investigators said.
Dramatic footage shared on social media showed Aeroflot's Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft, land at Sheremetyevo internationa...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on May 5 that he had ordered the military to launch further strikes on Gaza Strip militants in response to rocket fire from the territory, as an escalation entered its second day.
"I instructed the military this morning to continue its massive strikes on terror elements in the Gaza Strip and ordered...
The suicide bombers of the April 21 bombings visited Kashmir and Kerala for ‘some training,’ Sri Lanaka’s army chief lieutenant-general Mahesh Senanayake has said. He said it was for ‘some training’ or to ‘make some links’ with other foreign outfits.
It is the first time a top security official has confirmed the militants’ visit to India, which ...
North Korea's state media said on Sunday (May 5) that leader Kim Jong Un had overseen a rocket and tactical guided weapons test, after the drill on May 4 had raised concerns Pyongyang was escalating provocations with US nuclear negotiations deadlocked.
North Korea had last carried out a missile test in November 2017, before a rapid diplomatic ra...
Tokyo: A Japanese aerospace startup funded by a former internet maverick has successfully launched a small rocket into space.
Interstellar Technology Inc. says the unmanned MOMO-3 rocket has exceeded 100 kilometers (60 miles) in altitude before falling into the Pacific Ocean. The company says it proves that a rocket using mostly commercial parts can re...
Colombo: Four foreign nationals including one from Pakistan who violated immigration and emigration regulations were arrested by the police in Sri Lanka during search operations.
The arrested persons include two Nigerians and one each from Pakistan and Bangladesh, News 1st reported. The 25-year-old Pakistani and the 24-year-old Bangladeshi nationals were...
Jerusalem: A barrage of around 50 rockets was fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Saturday (May 4) and dozens were intercepted by air defences, the Israeli army said.
The army said earlier it had targeted two rocket launchers in Gaza with an air strike in response. It was not yet clear if there were casualties on either side. The escalation follows the ...
Madrasas in Sri Lanka should be regulated by the Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs Ministry and not by the Education Ministry, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said, days after the country's worst terror attack killed over 250 people.
Authorities are on high-alert in the country after nine suicide bombers carried out a series of dev...
India, close on the heels of getting Pakistan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar blacklisted, has given a clarion call at the UN for strengthening efforts to adopt the long-pending global convention on international terrorism amidst increasing terror attacks on places of worship across the globe.
India proposed a draft document on the Compre...
Colombo: Sri Lanka’s Catholic Church will televise a private Sunday mass after cancelling regular services over fears of a repeat of Easter suicide bombings that killed 257 people, a spokesman said.
Father Edmund Tillakaratne said public masses were suspended for a second week, but a service conducted by Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith will be broadcast on nati...
United Nations: The UN agency for disaster reduction has commended the Indian Meteorological Department's "almost pinpoint accuracy" of early warnings that helped authorities conduct a well-targeted evacuation plan and minimise the loss of life as extremely severe cyclonic storm Fani made landfall near the coastal city of Puri.
The powerful cyclone, strongest t...
Cyclone Fani expected to trigger heavy rains; claims 3 lives
As cyclone Fani is expected to trigger heavy rains in the northeast after hitting West Bengal, the Assam government on Friday (May 3) directed all district deputy commissioners and agencies concerned to be on alert and take necessary measures to deal with the situation. The Central Wat...
Colombo: An India-based photo journalist, who was in Sri Lanka to cover the aftermath of Easter Sunday bombings, was arrested by Sri Lankan police for alleged unauthorised entry into a school.
Siddiqui Ahamad Danish, who works for Reuters news agency and is based in New Delhi, was arrested when he allegedly attempted to forcibly enter a school in Negombo...
Islamabad: Pakistan has issued an official order to freeze the assets of and impose a travel ban on Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar after the UN declared him a "global terrorist". Pakistan-based Azhar is also banned from selling or purchasing arms and ammunition.
The UN sanctions committee on the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda on May 1 had announced ...
Washington: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is saying the right things and trying to make some changes in the country, but his military leadership too needs to take right decisions and right steps, the Trump administration said on May 1, hours after the UN Security Council designated Masood Azhar as a global terrorist.
Nearly a year-and-a-half after Pres...
A space capsule suspected to have exploded last month in an incident characterized by manufacturer SpaceX as an "anomaly" was in fact completely destroyed, a US Senator confirmed on May 1.
"The most recent SpaceX anomaly caused the complete loss of the (crew) capsule," Senator Richard Shelby, chairman of a Senate committee that manages NASA's bu...
In a major diplomatic win for India, the United Nations on Wednesday designated Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a 'global terrorist' after China lifted its hold on a proposal to blacklist him.
"Big, small, all join together. Masood Azhar designated as a terrorist in @UN Sanctions list. Grateful to all for their support," Indi...
Four members of a Sikh family, including a relative visiting from Punjab, were found shot dead at their home in West Chester, Ohio state Sunday night, newspapers reported on Thursday. West Chester police chief Joel Herzog told reporters that the victims were found by another relative who called the police. “My wife and my family are bleeding... the...
Washington: Terror groups may be increasingly recruiting women, data from the first large-scale research project evaluating the characteristics of women involved in jihadism-inspired terrorism has found, days after Sri Lanka witnessed the country's worst terror attack.
A woman was part of the nine suicide bombers in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday and intelligen...
Colombo: Two more Indian nationals have been arrested by police here for violating Sri Lankan immigration laws during their stay in the country, authorities said.
The Indians, aged 28 and 32, were arrested on Tuesday (April 30) from the Rajagiriya area without a valid visa, Welikada police station officers were quoted as saying by the Sunday Times. The t...
ISIS hunt: TN Q-Branch raids Chennai upscale apartment
The Q-Branch of the Tamil Nadu police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) were raiding a high-end apartment complex in Poonamalle, Chennai, in a bid to locate ISIS operatives ‘holed up’ there. Earlier, the police had reportedly arrested a suspect from Mannady. On interrogating him, t...
London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange faces sentencing in London on Wednesday for breaching his bail conditions, the whistle blowing site and a court official said.
Assange could face a 12-month prison sentence for the violation, although time already served in prison may be taken into account.
The 47-year-old, who was arrested earlier this month ...
Beijing: China said on Tuesday (April 30) that "some progress" has been achieved on designating Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN and hoped that the vexed issue will be "properly resolved" but refused to give any timeline.
The comments by the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman on Tuesday came days after President Xi Jinp...
United Nations: The UN humanitarian chief has said there has been "no progress" in dealing with the reasons why more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fled to Bangladesh from western Myanmar's Rakhine state. Mark Lowcock, who just returned from a visit to Bangladesh, said on April 29 that Myanmar has failed "to put in place confidence-building measures that would pers...
The leader of the Islamic State group praised the Easter suicide bombings that killed more than 250 people in Sri Lanka in a video released on Monday (April 29), calling on militants to be a "thorn" against their enemies in his first filmed appearance in nearly five years.
He was reported killed by the United States, which was confirmed by Russi...
Tokyo: For the first time in more than 200 years, Japan's emperor will abdicate on April 30, putting his son on the Chrysanthemum Throne and ushering in a new era for the world's oldest monarchy. In a set of solemn ceremonies, Emperor Akihito will hand over to his eldest son, 59-year-old Crown Prince Naruhito, also kicking off the new imperial "Reiwa" era...
Kerala CEO confirms bogus voting, CPM in a fix
In an embarrassment to the ruling CPI(M) in Kerala, the chief electoral officer, Teeka Ram Meena, on Monday, said bogus voting took place at a polling booth in Kannur district, Onmanorama reported on Monday (April 29). Three women were found doing it, the CEO was quoted as saying. "This happened at ...
Colombo: Introducing a tough new legislation to eliminate jihadism and extremism from Sri Lanka is the government’s top priority, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has said in the aftermath of country’s worst terror attacks on Easter Sunday.
The deadly attacks could have been prevented if the new Counter Terrorism Bill, which provides for territorial j...
Colombo: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Monday (April 29) appointed CD Wickremaratne, Senior Deputy Inspector General, as acting police chief.
The appointment came in the backdrop of suspending police chief Pujith Jayasundara after the defiant Inspector General refused to quit taking responsibility for the intelligence failure that led to t...
Colombo: Muslim women in Sri Lanka will not be allowed to wear any form of face veils in public from April 29 under new regulations announced by President Maithripala Sirisena who used emergency powers in the wake of the Easter Sunday bombings.
The new regulation banning any form of face covering was announced by the President on April 28, a week after t...
Pragya's curse on Masood Azhar could have averted Balakot: Digvijaya Singh
Taking a dig at BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Bhopal Pragya Thakur, Congress’ Digvijaya Singh who is fighting the elections from the same constituency said had Pragya 'cursed' Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, there would have been no need for the Balakot surgical str...
The father and two brothers of Zahran Hashim, the suspected mastermind behind the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, were killed in a police raid on safe houses two days ago, Reuters reported on Sunday (April 28).
Hashim’s father Mohammed Hashim and brothers Zainee Hashim and Rilwan Hashim, were among the 15 killed in an encounter with the military.
...
Colombo: Nearly 1,600 refugees from about 15 countries, mostly from Pakistan, are facing threats and have been attacked in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday bombings which killed over 250 people, an official said on Sunday (April 28).
Sri Lanka on Sunday (April 28) marked a week since the coordinated blasts hit three churches and three luxury hotels...
Colombo: The Islamic State has claimed the three militants who blew themselves up during a fierce gun battle with security forces in Sri Lanka's Eastern province, a media report said on April 28.
The shootout occurred on the night of April 26 as security forces continued their hunt for members of the National Thowheeth Jamaath (NTJ), the local terror out...
An overnight search operation carried out by the Sri Lankan military on April 27 resulted in a two-hour-long shootout killing sixteen people, including three women and six children.
The Islamic State, on April 28, has claimed the three militants who blew themselves up during the gun battle, a media report said.
The operation, carried out in t...
India on April 27 issued an advisory asking citizens not to undertake non-essential travel to Sri Lanka in view of the recent wave of bombings in which over 250 people were killed. In the advisory, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said those requiring to undertake emergency travels can contact the High Commission of India in Colombo, the Assi...
Washington: The US State Department on Friday (April 26) raised the level of its travel warning for Sri Lanka, urging citizens to reconsider visiting the island in the wake of a devastating series of suicide bombings that killed more than 250 people.
The department has "ordered the departure of all school-age family members of US government employees in kin...
At least 15 people, including six children and three women, were killed when suicide bombers blew themselves up during a shootout with security forces in Sri Lanka's Eastern province, police said Saturday (April 27).
The security forces continue their hunt for members of the local terror group National Thowheeth Jamath (NTJ) which was behind the...
Colombo: Sri Lankan security forces raided a safe house of Islamic State affiliated militants in the east of the country and killed at least two men in an exchange of fire, the military said on Saturday (April 27).
Gunmen opened fire on troops when they attempted to storm the house in the town of Kalmunai, spokesman Sumith Atapattu said.
"In our retal...
New York: The sexual assault trial of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein will take place on September 9, three months later than expected, a New York judge said on Friday (April 26).
Weinstein, a catalyst for the #MeToo anti-harassment movement-- has been charged over the alleged assaults of two women and faces life in prison if he is convicted...
The Sri Lankan government has found clear links between the group behind the Easter Sunday attacks (April 21) and the Islamic State (ISIS). The leader of the group, Zaharan Hashim, established connection with ISIS while in Tamil Nadu.
“He went underground at one point and we observed that he went to India. We worked with Indian intelligence agen...
Colombo: Sri Lanka's top police official, Inspector General of Police Pujith Jayasundara, has resigned over failures that led to the deadly Easter bomb attacks, the country's president said on April 26.
"The IGP has resigned. He has sent his resignation to the acting defence secretary. I'll nominate a new IGP soon," President Maithripala Sirisena told re...
Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping on April 25 sought to ease growing concerns about his ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), vowing to prevent debt risks and saying his global infrastructure project "is not an exclusive club". Xi made his remarks at a summit on his signature foreign policy, which aims to reinvent the ancient Silk Road to connect As...
Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused the United States of acting in "bad faith" during his Hanoi summit with President Donald Trump, and says peace on the peninsula depends on Washington, state media said April 26.
Kim made the comments during his first summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin on April 25 in Vladivostok, the Korean Central New...
The reform of the UN Security Council has been the most important and yet stagnating processes of the General Assembly, India has said. The country called for action towards early reform of the UN organ that rightfully accords a ‘central and leading’ role to Africa to ensure the council reflects the world of today and not of 1945.
Addressing a h...
Colombo: The Islamist extremist group behind the deadly Easter Sunday blasts in Sri Lanka would have been planning the suicide attacks for “at least seven to eight years” and could be led by someone having the calibre of slain LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabakaran, according to Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka.
Speaking during the emergency debate in Parliament...
Colombo: The number of Indians killed in the massive Easter Sunday bombings rose to 11 on Thursday (April 25), as one more person succumbed to injuries, taking the total number of foreigners who died in the attack to 36, according to the Sri Lankan foreign ministry.
Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said that as of Wednesday (April 24), the nu...
Washington: NASA's robotic Mars InSight lander has recorded a likely "marsquake" for the first time ever, the US space agency said. The faint seismic signal, detected by the lander's Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument, was recorded on April 6, the lander's 128th Martian day. This is the first recorded trembling that appears to have com...
Vladivostok: Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to seek closer ties as they met face-to-face on April 25 for the first time. The meeting in Russia's Far Eastern city of Vladivostok came with Kim looking for support in his nuclear stand-off with Washington and Putin keen to put Moscow forward as a player in another global ...
Days after the serial bomb blasts in Colombo that killed more than 350 people and injured over 500, another explosion took place in Pugoda town, 40 kilometres east of Colombo on Thursday morning (April 25). Meanwhile, all church services have been suspended in the island nation. Also, 16 more suspects have been arrested in connection with the horri...
Tokyo: A Japanese court granted Carlos Ghosn bail on April 25, meaning the former Nissan boss could soon walk out of his Tokyo detention centre to prepare his defence against multiple charges of financial misconduct. The Tokyo District Court set bail at 500 million yen ($4.5 million) as the 65-year-old faces four charges ranging from concealing part of hi...
San Francisco: Facebook has said that its profit took a hit from setting aside billions of dollars for an anticipated fine from US regulators, in a quarterly report that sent shares higher. The leading social network logged a profit of USD 2.4 billion — down 51% from a year earlier — on revenue that climbed 26% to USD 15.1 billion in the first three months of thi...
Colombo: One of the attackers behind the bombings in Sri Lanka on April 21 that claimed more than 359 lives, once studied in the UK and Australia, BBC reported.
Humble backgrounds
Police have identified eight of the nine attackers including a woman. Most of them were well-educated and came from middle class families, a BBC report said.
Two suicide ...
New Delhi: Intelligence inputs regarding a possible terror attack in Sri Lanka were shared by Indian agencies with their Sri Lankan counterparts earlier this month after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) completed its probe into an ISIS-inspired module planning to kill prominent leaders in South India, officials said here.
The input was sent through ...
The Interpol will deploy a team to Sri Lanka to assist the national authorities investigating the series of bomb attacks that killed 359 and injured more than 500 people in the country on April 21, ANI reported.
According to an official statement checks are already being made against the organisation’s stolen and lost travel documents and nomina...
Geneva: The world's first malaria vaccine has been launched in Malawi after concerted efforts of over 30 years to protect children from the deadly disease that claims over 435,000 lives globally every year.
The World Health Organization (WHO) welcomed the Government of Malawi's landmark pilot program. The launch of the first and only malaria vaccine, kn...
Colombo: The US ambassador to Sri Lanka has denied the United States had prior knowledge of the Easter militant attacks that it passed to the Colombo government, CNN television reported on Wednesday (April 24).
"We had no prior knowledge of these attacks," US ambassador Alaina Teplitz told the US channel in an interview on the suicide attacks on Sunday (...
Tokyo: Thousands of Japanese people, some as young as nine, forcibly sterilized under now-defunct eugenics laws, will receive government compensation after lawmakers passed historic legislation on Wednesday (April 24).
Following the unanimous vote, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe voiced "sincere regret" and said the government "apologized wholeheartedly" ove...
Yangon: Recovery teams in Myanmar fought against a huge lake of sludge on Wednesday (April 24) in their search for bodies after a landslide engulfed more than 50 jade miners -- the latest fatal accident in a notoriously dangerous but highly-lucrative industry.
Dozens die each year in landslides caused by jade mining, a poorly regulated industry rife wit...
Fresh reports on the Sri Lankan bomb blasts say "The suicide bombers involved in Easter serial blasts were all from Sri Lanka, middle and upper middle class youth." "One of them had an undergraduate degree from the UK, and a PG degree from Australia," The Hindu reported.
While the island country is reeling in the aftermath of the series of bomb ...
Washington: The White House has refused to meet a Tuesday (April 23) deadline to deliver six years of President Donald Trump's tax returns to Congress, escalating a battle that is expected to head to court.
The House Ways and Means Committees chairman, Richard Neal, had given the Internal Revenue Service until April 10 to turn over the president's personal ...
Washington: A 61-year-old Indian has been jailed in the US for five years for smuggling foreigners, including a majority of Indians, into America, the Department of Justice has said. Yadvinder Singh Sandhu pleaded guilty early this year, saying he personally assisted around 400 aliens to unlawfully enter the US between 2013 and 2015, according to the Departmen...
New Delhi/Beijing: A medium-intensity earthquake of magnitude 5.8 hit Arunachal Pradesh early on Wednesday (April 24), the National Centre for Seismology said.
The epicenter of the quake was West Siang district, it said. The quake occurred at 1:45 am at the depth of 10 kilometres. The northeast region falls under a high-seismic zone and is prone to quakes.
Stro...
The dreaded jihadist organisation, Islamic State, has reportedly claimed responsibility for the Easter day serial bombings in Sri Lanka (April 21). The island nation, predominantly peaceful in the past decade, saw 321 deaths in the ghastly attack.
The attack, planned and executed in a staggered manner through the day, looked unending as explosio...
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Tuesday said that he will make changes in top positions of the country's defence forces within the next 24 hours after their failure to prevent the deadly suicide blasts despite having the prior intelligence inputs about the attacks.
Addressing the nation for the first time since the Easter Sunday bla...
ISIS claims Lanka Easter blasts as toll rises to 321
Sri Lanka’s worst terror attack targeting churches and luxury hotels that killed 321 people on Easter Sunday (April 21) was claimed by the Islamic State even as a senior minister informed Parliament on Tuesday (April 23) that initial probe suggested local Islamist extremists carried out the deva...
Indian intelligence agencies had alerted Sri Lankan authorities of a terror strike hours ahead of a series of bomb blasts which killed at least 321 people in the country, a report on NDTV said.
The report said Indian intelligence agencies contacted Sri Lankan officials and warned them of a specific attack on churches just two hours ahead of the ...
Mumbai: Expressing dismay and shock at the multiple bomb blasts that killed and injured hundreds of people in Sri Lanka, the country's former cricketers Chaminda Vaas and Rangana Herath on Tuesday (April 23) said the need of the hour is to stay strong and united.
Sri Lankan authorities arrested 24 people in connection with the multiple blasts targeting ...
Colombo: Sri Lanka on Tuesday (April 23) placed all police stations in Colombo on high alert as police were hunting for an unidentified container truck and a van, believed to be carrying explosives.
A warning issued by the Director of Security at the Colombo Harbour said intelligence had found information that an unidentified container truck and a van ca...
Peshawar: Unidentified gunmen shot dead a policeman escorting a team of polio workers in northwest Pakistan on April 23, a day after a nation-wide campaign was launched against the crippling disease still endemic in the country.
Several school students in Pakistan's Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province reportedly fell ill and were taken to hospital on April 22 aft...
Chennai: The Sri Lanka government on April 22 imposed an emergency in the country in the wake of serial bombings on churches and hotels in the island country on April 21.
Reports say the decision to impose emergency was taken at a meeting of the National Security Council to ensure public security.
A gazette issued in the name of Sri Lankan president Mat...
Naypyidaw (Myanmar): Myanmar's Supreme Court rejected an appeal on April 23 by two Reuters journalists jailed for seven years each on charges linked to their reporting on the Rohingya crisis, one of the defence lawyers confirmed.
Reporters Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, have been behind bars since their arrest in December 2017 under the Official Secrets Act. The ...
Madrid: Spain's outgoing prime minister faced an onslaught of criticism from his right-wing rivals over Catalonia's secession crisis in a testy four-way debate ahead of elections, while he warned them against cozying up to the far-right.
The debate on Spain's public television brought together the four main candidates for Sunday's (April 28) general ele...
Tesla CEO Elon Musk expects to start converting the company's electric cars into fully self-driving vehicles next year as part of an audacious plan to create a network of robotic taxis to compete against Uber and other ride-hailing services.
The vision sketched out on Monday (April 22) during an event at Tesla's Silicon Valley headquarters requi...
Seoul: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will "soon" visit Russia for his first summit with President Vladimir Putin, state media has reported, confirming a Kremlin announcement. Kim "will soon pay a visit to the Russian Federation at the invitation" of Putin, North Korea's official KCNA news service said. "They will have talks during this visit," the brief...
San Francisco: Facebook has said that has hired a high-ranking US State Department lawyer credited with helping craft the controversial Patriot Act as the social network's new general counsel. Jennifer Newstead will replace Colin Stretch, who announced in July that he planned to leave Facebook. Newstead will oversee global legal functions at the California-based ...
BCCI shifts IPL final to Hyderabad after TNCA fails to get permission on locked stands
The Indian Premier League final scheduled on May 12 was shifted from Chennai to Hyderabad after the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA) failed to get requisite permission from the government to open the three closed stands.While the Chennai Super Kings still...
Bengaluru: Around 100 staff members of the ailing Jet Airways on Monday (April 22) staged a demonstration here, urging the government to intervene and bail out the airline.
Jet Airways had on April 17 announced temporary suspension of operations after it failed to receive emergency funds from lenders, leaving about 23,000 employees to face a bleak future. ...
Colombo: At least eight Indians are among the dead after a string of devastating suicide blasts struck churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka, killing 290 people on Easter on April 21, officials said on Monday (April 22).
"Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry has confirmed the death of one more individual - H Shivakumar - in the blasts on April 21, taking the to...
The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) has stepped up vigil along the coast to prevent any possible incursion of terror elements into the country after the serial blasts in Sri Lanka.
The force had been asked to intensify patrolling and challenge any incoming ‘unmarked’ vessel as per standard operating procedures.
The development came hours after Sri L...
Colombo: Seven suicide bombers were involved in a series of eight devastating blasts that tore through churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter on April 21, killing 290 people and wounding 500 others in the worst terror attack in the country’s history, authorities said on Monday (April 22).
No group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack...
Colombo: Police in Sri Lanka said on Monday (April 22) that the investigation into the Easter Sunday bombings will examine reports that the intelligence community failed to detect or warn of possible suicide attacks before the violence. The eight bombings of churches, luxury hotels and other sites was Sri Lanka’s deadliest violence since a devastating civil...
As many as 290 people were killed in one of the deadliest bomb blasts that rocked the island nation of Sri Lanka on Sunday (April 21), on the occasion of Easter. The dead included six Indians and 27 foreign residents.
The blasts that occurred across eight locations, targeted St Anthonys Church in Colombo, St Sebastians Church in the western coas...
Colombo: At least six Indians have been killed in a string of eight powerful blasts, including suicide attacks, which struck four churches, three luxury hotels frequented by foreigners and a residential area in Sri Lanka on Easter on April 21, officials said on Monday (April 22).
The blasts targeted St Anthony’s Church in Colombo, St Sebastian’s Church i...
Colombo: An improvised pipe bomb discovered close to Colombo’s main airport was successfully defused by the Sri Lanka air force, police said.
A police source told AFP that a “homemade” pipe bomb had been found late Sunday (April 21) on a road leading towards the main terminal, which remains open with heavy security after deadly attacks on churches and ho...
207 killed, 500 injured as blasts hit on Easter in Sri Lanka
At least 207 people were killed and around 500 others injured in a string of eight powerful blasts, including suicide attacks, that struck three churches and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, shattering a decade of peace in the island nation after th...
Colombo: At least 207 people were killed and around 500 others injured in a string of eight powerful blasts, including suicide attacks, that struck three churches and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, shattering a decade of peace in the island nation after the end of the brutal civil war with the LTTE.
The blasts - one...
Chennai: Minutes after seven bomb blasts ripped through Sri Lanka, killing at least 160 people and injuring 450 at three churches, as many hotels and a zoo, messages have poured in from the global community, condemning the attacks and condoling the families of those who lost their lives in the attacks.
#PrayForSriLanka trended on Twitter as denizens acro...
Islamabad: Pakistan on April 21 deplored India's "unilateral" decision to suspend cross-LoC trade and rejected the allegations regarding its "misuse" by elements from across the border to smuggle weapons, narcotics, fake currency and foment terrorism.
Hardening its stand against Pakistan, India on April 18 indefinitely suspended cross-border trade at two p...
Zahran Hashim and Abu Mohammed have been identified as the suicide bombers behind the Sri Lankan bomb blasts that occurred earlier this morning (April 21), a report in CNN-News 18 said. More details could not be ascertained and their connection to any terror outfit could not be established.
They are suspected of attacking the Shangri La Hotel, C...
Lahore: For the first time in its history, Pakistan has put on display rare documents of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre to mark its 100th anniversary.
The six-day exhibition showcasing about 70 historical documents related to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre and Martial Law in Punjab in April 1919 opened at the Lahore Heritage Museum here on April 20. A yea...
Beijing: Two Indian battleships, including the biggest indigenously built stealth destroyer INS Kolkata, have arrived at the port city of Qingdao to take part in the Chinese Navy's fleet review while the Pakistan naval ships will be conspicuous by their absence at the event.
China's Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is celebrating its 70th founding ann...
Los Angeles: Hollywood veteran Robert De Niro once again took a jibe at US President Donald Trump, this time calling him a "wannabe gangster." The actor made these comments in an appearance on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", the episode of which was filmed ahead of the release of the Mueller report, that found "no evidence" of a "collusion" between the Tr...
As Colombo was rocked by a multiple explosions, External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said on Sunday (April 21) that India was keeping a close watch on the situation. "Colombo - I am in constant touch with Indian High Commissioner in Colombo. We are keeping a close watch on the situation. @IndiainSL," Swaraj tweeted.
Six blasts hit three churc...
Colombo: Sri Lankan police have arrested 13 men in connection with multiple bomb blasts on churches and hotels that killed 290 people, officials said Monday (April 22). Authorities have not made public details on those held after Sundays attacks. But a police source told AFP the 13 were detained at two locations in and around Colombo.
Union minister of e...
India has said its commitment of $3 billion in development assistance to Sri Lanka is inspired by rationale of South-South Cooperation, underscoring that New Delhi's "unique" development cooperation with Colombo is built on foundations of political understanding and geographic realities.
"Sri Lanka has a special place in Indian hearts, given the...
United Nations: The 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy which killed thousands of people is among the world's "major industrial accidents" of the 20th century, a UN report has said, warning that 2.78 million workers die from occupational accidents and work-related diseases each year.
The report, released by the UN labour agency International Labour Organization (ILO), said...
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia's government said it will resurrect a multi-billion-dollar property and transportation project in Kuala Lumpur involving a Chinese state company, calling it a contribution to China's global "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative.
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is traveling to China next week to attend the second Belt and Road f...
New York: Two Indian nationals have been apprehended by the patrol agents at the US-Mexico border in Arizona after they got stranded while trying to enter America illegally, authorities said. The duo called for help using technology installed in remote locations to help people in distress.
Agents assigned to the Ajo Border Patrol Station rescued the two m...
New York: An Indian-origin neurologist has been charged with conspiracy to unlawfully dispense controlled substances and commit healthcare fraud in the United States. Anil Prasad, 62, of Louisiana was charged with one count of prescribing controlled substances outside the course of professional practice and for no legitimate purpose and one count of conspira...
Jerusalem: Israel on April 19 struck Hamas targets on the Gaza Strip with tank and aircraft fire after troops were shot at on the Israeli side of the border, the army said. The Israeli military said in a statement that "no injuries to soldiers were reported" after its troops came under fire.
Palestinian security sources in Hamas-ruled Gaza told AFP that th...
Moscow: Russia on Friday (April 19) once more dismissed the Mueller report, saying it failed to present clear evidence of any meddling by Moscow in the 2016 US election and called its impact on relations regrettable.
"As a whole the report as before does not present any reasonable proof at all that Russia allegedly meddled in the electoral process in th...
London: Embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya once again used social media to reiterate his offer to pay back the debt owed to public sector banks in India, this time targeting the State Bank of India (SBI) for allegedly wasting Indian taxpayers money on expensive legal fees in the UK.
Days after a UK High Court judge refused to dismiss an interim order ...
Paris: French president Emmanuel Macron is hosting officials from the United Nations cultural agency, where he is expected to set out ideas for the reconstruction of Notre-Dame Cathedral.
He will meet with state delegates from UNESCO, which oversees global heritage issues, in the Elysee Palace on Friday (April 19).
Macron's push for a speedy rebuild...
Beijing: China said on Friday (April 19) it was ready to hold a Wuhan-style summit meeting with India this year to improve bilateral ties, notwithstanding India's reported decision to boycott its 2nd Belt and Road Forum (BRF) to be held here next week to protest the sovereignty concerns over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Addressing a media...
Ahmedabad: No Pakistani soldier or civilian died in the air strike on a terror camp at Balakot in Pakistan in February, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on Thursday.
Addressing BJP’s women workers here, she said Indian military was given a “free hand” in the operation but was clearly told that no Pakistani civilian should be killed and also the...
Taipei: A strong earthquake rattled eastern Taiwan early on Thursday (April 18) afternoon, causing scattered light damage in the capital and the eastern coast region.
The 6.1 magnitude quake was centered northwest of the city of Hualien and almost 19 kilometers (12 miles) deep, Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau said.
Water pipes at the city's train sta...
Karachi: Unidentified gunmen donning uniforms of paramilitary personnel on Thursday (April 18) shot dead at least 14 passengers after forcing them to disembark from buses on a highway in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province, in the latest targeted killing in the country.
Around 15 to 20 gunmen stopped five to six buses travelling between Karachi and G...
Kathmandu: Nepal on Thursday (April 18) successfully launched its first satellite NepaliSat-1 into space from America, evoking unbridled excitement among the people and scientists.
The satellite developed by the Nepalese scientists was launched at 2:31 am (Nepal time) from Virginia in United States, according to Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAS...
Miami: President Donald Trump on Wednesday (April 17) ramped up pressure on Cuba with new restrictions on US travel and remittances and a green light to lawsuits over seized property as he vowed to rid Latin America of leftists.
Defying European warnings on the long-festering property issue, Trump rolled back much of previous President Barack Obama's b...
Los Angeles: Veteran actor-comedian Mike Myers is set to star in and executive producer a new comedy series for Netflix.
The streaming giant has ordered six episodes of the half-hour limited series, in which Myers will play multiple characters. "I love creating characters, and Netflix has given me a fantastic playground to play in," Myers said in a statement...
Canberra: Australian electoral authorities say they have for the first time set up a cyber security task force and are working with social media companies to tackle misinformation in the run up to general elections on May 18.
Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers says safeguarding the elections integrity gained priority due to experiences in other ...
Egyptian football star Mohamed "Mo" Salah has called for change in the way women are treated in the Muslim world, in an interview to the Time magazine published on Wednesday.
The 26-year-old Liverpool forward was named one of the US magazines 100 most influential figures of the year, alongside other athletes including Tiger Woods, LeBron James a...
Paris: Two-thirds of the largely medieval roof of the famed Notre Dame cathedral in Paris have gone after the devastating fire, but UN cultural experts are standing by to offer help in rebuilding the iconic structure, UNESCO World Heritage Centre Director Mechtild Rossler said.
Rössler, who visited the site on Tuesday (April 16), told UN News that the ...
Taipei: Terry Gou, the chairman of tech giant Foxconn on April 17 announced his intention to run for the presidency of Taiwan in 2020 on a ticket from the Beijing-friendly opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party.
“I am willing to join the party’s primary. If I win I will represent the KMT in the 2020 elections,” Gou said at a KMT meeting in Taipei in comments...
Melbourne: Indian energy giant Adani has urged the Australian government to give its controversial coal mine project "a fair go" and indicated that the opposition Labor Party would not derail the proposed billion dollar project if it comes to power.
Gautam Adani-led Adani Group entered Australia in 2010 with the purchase of the greenfield Carmichael coal m...
Washington: Saturn's largest moon Titan has small liquid lakes that run more than 100 metres deep, perched atop hills and filled with methane, scientists have found using data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
The findings, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, are the first confirmation of just how deep some of Titan's lakes are (more than 300 feet, or ...
Seoul: Activity has been detected at North Korea's main nuclear site, suggesting Pyongyang may be reprocessing radioactive material into bomb fuel since the collapse of a summit with Washington, a US monitor said on April 17.
The possible signs of fresh reprocessing activity last week come after a February summit between US President Donald Trump and N...
Washington: Ecuador's president on April 16 accused Julian Assange of hosting numerous hackers at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to give them directions on how to propagate information on topics important to the WikiLeaks founder and his financiers.
President Lenin Moreno said that Swedish programmer Ola Bini, who is in custody in Ecuador, was one of the ...
Paris: French firefighters on April 15 won an hours-long battle to save the main structure of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, after a colossal fire caused the spire of the historic edifice to crash to the ground and wiped out centuries of heritage.
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed that “we will rebuild” Notre-Dame and expressed relief that “the wo...
Attari: A group of 100 Indian fishermen on April 15 crossed over to the Indian side through Attari-Wagah border after the Pakistan government released them from jail as a goodwill gesture.
The fishermen crossed over to India on Monday evening on the basis of ‘emergency travel certificates’ issued by the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, officials sai...
A fire broke out at the famous Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, as per reports in the BBC.
The cause of the fire had not been ascertained but reports said it could be linked to the ongoing renovation work.
It’s getting worse. But the fire brigade has turned up. Hard to see how the tackle this. The plume of smoke is already 100s of feet ...
Los Angeles: Our brains may someday be able to directly connect to vast cloud-computing networks in real time, allowing us to gain a ‘Matrix’-style instant access to the world’s knowledge by simply by thinking about a specific topic, scientists claim.
According to a research published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, exponential progress in nanotech...
Former PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi says she has no plans to run for office but in her post-retirement time she will focus on finding systemic solutions" to address an impending care crisis due to a shortage of caregivers to look after young children and the elderly.
Nooyi, speaking at the 2019 Women in the World Summit at New York, warn...
Wellington: New Zealand's foreign minister has confirmed a New Zealand nurse has been held captive by the Islamic State group in Syria for almost six years, information long kept secret for fear her life might be at risk.
The status of nurse and midwife Louisa Akavi, now 62, is unknown but her employer, the International Committee of the Red Cross, says it ...
Damascus: Rockets fired by jihadists on April 15 killed at least 11 people in the Syrian city of Aleppo held by President Bashar al-Assad's regime, state news agency SANA reported.
Aleppo sits in the north of the country next to Idlib, a province dominated by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Since the regime regained control ...
Multimedia giant Walt Disney announced the launch of its streaming service called ‘Disney Plus’ on April 11. It is set to debut on November 12 this year at $6.99 per month or $70
For starters, Disney will offer content from its Walt Disney studios, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars and National Geographic. The cartoon-maker will add 25 original televisio...
Amritsar: British High Commissioner to India Dominic Asquith, who laid a wreath at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial here on Saturday to mark the centenary of the massacre, said Britain deeply regretted the incident that took place on this day a hundred years ago.
Asquith visited the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in the morning to pay homage to those killed in th...
Khartoum: Sudan's new military leader has resigned just a day after being sworn in, as the country's army rulers insisted they would pave the way for a civilian government. The head of Sudan's new ruling military council, General Awad Ibn Ouf, announced his departure on Friday (April 12) after being sworn in late on Thursday (April 10) following the ouster o...
Washington: The newly pictured supermassive black hole is a beast with no name, at least not an official one. And what happens next could be cosmically confusing. The team of astronomers who created the image of the black hole called it M87(asterisk). (The asterisk is silent.)
A language professor has given it a name from a Hawaiian chant 'Powehi' meaning "...
Pyongyang: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un says he is open to having a third summit with President Donald Trump if the United States could offer mutually acceptable terms for an agreement by the end of the year.
Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency on Saturday said Kim's speech came during a session of the North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament. ...
Washington: US President Donald Trump has said he is seriously considering funnelling detained illegal migrants into the self-declared sanctuary cities that oppose his tough immigration policies.
Trumps announcement on Twitter reversed a previous White House assurance that the idea - criticised as political retribution against cities led by opposition Democra...
Washington: A bipartisan group of half a dozen influential American lawmakers has reintroduced an important legislation in the House of Representatives which seeks to advance the US-India strategic relationship.
If enacted, the legislation would ensure that the US State department treat India as a NATO ally for the purposes of the Arms Export Control Act.
...
The haunting image of a little girl crying helplessly as she and her mother are taken into custody by US border officials has won the prestigious World Press Photo Award. Judges said veteran Getty photographer John Moores picture taken after Honduran mother Sandra Sanchez and her daughter Yanela illegally crossed the US-Mexican border last year sho...
Cape Canaveral: SpaceX has carried out its first commercial launch with its Falcon Heavy rocket tasked with placing a Saudi satellite in orbit. The bright white rocket rose with a mighty roar and spewed thick gray smoke on the ground as it made its way up into clear blue skies over Cape Canaveral, Florida. It trailed a long stream of bright orange fire.
Boister...
Washington: India is concerned about the "threats" it faces in space, the Pentagon has said, defending the country for acquiring anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test capabilities. On March 27, India achieved a historic feat by shooting down its own low-orbit satellite with a ground-to-space missile, making the country a space power. The test made India the fourt...
London: Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange was on Thursday (April 11) arrested from his Ecuador Embassy hideout in London after the South American country withdrew the asylum granted to him.
Scotland Yard confirmed the arrest and said its officers had executed a warrant against Assange dating back to June 2012 for breach of bail conditions.
The 47-y...
Geneva: Fighting in Libya's capital has killed 56 people and wounded 266 over the last six days, the World Health Organization said on Thursday (April 11), as the UN mobilised to support the countrys over-stretched hospitals.
"Thousands of people have fled their homes, while others are trapped in conflict areas. Hospitals inside and outside (Tripoli) ar...
A US warship laden with hi-tech fighter planes took centre stage at key war games in the Philippines on Thursday (April 11), brandishing military might as fresh tensions bubble in the contentious South China Sea.
The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, with at least 10 F-35B stealth jets on deck, stood guard as amphibious tanks rolled onto a Phili...
Dr Sheldon Cooper and friends will be thrilled at the release of the black hole image. The popular television series ‘Big Bang Theory’s’ physicists, who represent the quantum mechanics and physics researchers in a lighter vein are often found quarrelling about testing theoretical physics. A team of scientists captured the image of the Black Hole Sa...
Paris: Astronomers on April 10 unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered across the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity.
The image of a dark core with a flame-orange halo of gas and plasma shows a supermassive black hole 50 million lightyears away in a galaxy known as M87, they announced...
Rose Marie Bentley was an avid swimmer, raised five kids, helped her husband run a feed store, and lived to the ripe age of 99. It was only after she died that medical students discovered that all her internal organs except for her heart were in the wrong place.
The discovery of the rare condition, which was presented this week to a conference o...
New Delhi: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Tuesday (April 9) underwent a check-up at a hospital in Delhi after some health complications, hospital sources said. The 83-year-old leader came down here from Dharamshala for the check-up at the Max hospital in Saket, they said.
"Yes, he underwent a check-up at the hospital. He generally visits Max fa...
London: Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, who scooped last year's Booker International Prize for fiction, was named on Tuesday (April 9) among five female nominees for this years prestigious literary award. Six writers in total have been shortlisted for the British-based prize which celebrates the translated English-language versions of novels from around th...
Washington: A 67-year-old Indian national has conceded before a US court of trying to obtain American citizenship through fraudulent means, the Department of Justice said Monday (April 8). Harpal Singh charged with one count of attempted naturalization fraud, faces up to 10 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for August 5.
According to documents fi...
London: Tech giants like Facebook and Google came under increasing pressure in Europe on Monday (April 8) when countries proposed stricter rules to force them to block extreme material such as terrorist propaganda and child porn.
Britain called for a first-of-its-kind watchdog for social media that could fine executives and even ban companies. And a Eur...
US President Donald Trump on April 7 announced the departure of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, underscoring his intent to toughen immigration policy amid a surge in illegal crossings along the southern border.
Nielsen's exit marks the end of a difficult relationship with her boss, who was said to be unhappy with her performance despite her...
Two men who opened fire on a crowd of people gathered for a baby shower, wounding six people, including two children, may have acted in relation for an earlier gang conflict, the police said Sunday.
Authorities have only ‘shards of information’ about what happened at the family gathering in Chicago because witnesses are not cooperating, a police s...
New Delhi: India chose a much lower orbit of less than 300 km during Mission Shakti for “capability demonstration” and to avoid threat of debris to global space assets, DRDO Chairman G Satheesh Reddy said on April 6. His remark comes days after NASA raised concerns about the spread of debris from the Anti-Satellite Test (A-SAT) test India conducted on March 2...
London: Britain has begun issuing passports with the words "European Union" removed from the front cover - despite Brexit being delayed and uncertainty over when the country will leave the bloc.
The interior ministry confirmed that some passports introduced from March 30, the day after Britain was originally due to depart, no longer include references t...
Jammu: A couple was injured on April 6 in Pakistani firing along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district, officials said.
Sanjeev Kumar, 32, and his wife Rita Kumari, 28, were hit by bullets inside their house during unprovoked firing by Pakistan in the Kalal area of Nowshera sector around 2.30 am, they said. The officials sai...
Over the top (OTT) service providers like Netflix and Amazon Prime are adding several shows and movies every week to their content. The first of week of April has some interesting shows lined up. Bookmark your favourites right away:
Our Planet
Narrated by the iconic Sir David Attenborough, ‘Our Planet’ is a wildlife documentary series. From t...
Mumbai: Restrictions on the H1-B visas by the US have compelled Indian tech companies to hire more locally and led to an escalation in employee costs, a rating agency said April 6. Second largest exporter Infosys led with 2,122 visa denials in fiscal year 2017-18, followed by its larger rival TCS with 1,896 rejections, the report by Care Ratings said. "The...
New York: Legendary Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger on April 5 said he is "on the mend" after reportedly undergoing heart valve replacement surgery in New York. Less than a week ago, the band announced they would postpone the North American leg of their upcoming tour so the 75-year-old Jagger could receive medical treatment.
Industry tracker Billboar...
Washington: David Malpass, a top US Treasury official in Trump administration, was on April 5 unanimously selected as the new president of the World Bank.
The World Bank's 25-member executive board unanimously approved 63-year-old Malpass, who is currently Under Secretary of Treasury for International Affairs, as the development lender's 13th President for ...
Hyderabad: India has achieved success in getting Pakistan isolated even among Islamic countries in the aftermath of the terror attacks, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said on April 5. Swaraj was addressing a meeting organised in support of the BJPs candidate in the Malkajgiri Lok Sabha constituency, N Ramachandra Rao.
"We achieved success in isola...
Ottawa: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on April 5 warned of the risk of interference by Russia in Canadian parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall. "We have seen over the past number of years an increase in the interference or the implication of foreign actors in democratic processes," Trudeau told a news conference in Toronto.
"We saw very clear...
Washington: The United States will designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization, an unprecedented move that would ramp up pressure on the elite force, The Wall Street Journal reported on April 5.
The newspaper, quoting unnamed officials, said president Donald Trump’s administration would announce the long-mulled decision as soon as Apri...
New York: Boeing announced on April 5 it would cut the production schedule of its 737 aircraft line following the two recent crashes that have seen the 737 MAX grounded worldwide.
The aerospace giant plans to trim production to 42 planes per month, down from 52 per month, starting in mid-April. Boeing shares tumbled after the disclosure, which was release...
Tehran: Floods in Iran since March have killed 70 people the head of the emergency services said on Friday according to the official IRNA News Agency. "The floods also injured 791 persons of which 45 are still hospitalised," Pirhossein Koolivand, the head of the national Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Organisation said.
A report published on the EMS w...
Los Angeles: TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, who is in a relationship with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, filed for divorce the day after Bezos divorce was finalised. Sanchez and talent agent Patrick Whitesell, her husband of 14 years, both filed divorce papers on April 5. They are seeking joint custody of their two kids.
The divorce of Bezos and wife MacKenzie Bezos was ...
Environmental disasters linked to climate change are threatening the lives and futures of over 19 million children in Bangladesh, including prompting many families to push their daughters into child marriages, UNICEF said on April 5.
"Climate change is deepening the environmental threat faced by families in Bangladesh's poorest communities, leav...
San Francisco: Amazon on April 4 confirmed that it is working on a project to deploy a network of satellites for high-speed internet service in underserved parts of the world. Project Kuiper was first reported by tech news website GeekWire, which cited US regulatory filings disclosing the satellite project that could cost billions of dollars to complete.
"Proj...
A Japanese probe began descending towards an asteroid on April 4 on a mission to blast a crater into its surface and collect material that could shed light on the solar system's evolution. The mission will be the latest in a series of explorations carried out by the Japanese space agency's Hayabusa2 probe and could reveal more about the origin of l...
Christchurch: The man accused of carrying out the Christchurch mosque attacks last month will face 50 murder charges when he appears in court this week, New Zealand police said on Thursday.
Australian Brenton Tarrant was previously charged with one murder as a holding measure, but police said all the deaths and injuries in the March 15 attacks would be reflecte...
India is one of the highest taxing nations in the world, US President Donald Trump has said, as he again slammed the country for imposing 100% tariffs on American products, including the iconic Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Such a high tariff is not fair, Trump said on April 2 during National Republican Congressional Committee Annual Spring Dinne...
