World

Airports and bus and train stations across Germany were at a standstill on Monday, causing disruption for millions at the start of the working week during one of the largest walkouts in decades as Europe’s biggest economy reels from inflation. The 24-hour “warning” strikes called by the Verdi trade union and railway…

Spain’s first major wildfire of the year raged in the eastern Valencia region on Friday, destroying more than 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) of forest and forcing 1,500 residents to abandon their homes, authorities said. An unusually dry winter across parts of the south of the European continent has reduced moisture in…

India’s parliament on Friday disqualified the leader of the main opposition Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, a day after a court jailed him for two years in a defamation case loosely linked to the prime minister, parliament said in a statement. Gandhi “stands disqualified from the membership of Lok Sabha”, parliament said,…

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were set to hold a second day of talks on Tuesday, the Russian leader Vladimir Putin said he was open to discussing China’s proposals on the fighting in Ukraine. The sit-down was to be unexpectedly mirrored in Kyiv, where Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was en route to…

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad met on Sunday with Emirati leaders in Abu Dhabi, his second Gulf visit since last month’s earthquake in his country prompted renewed efforts to bring Damascus back into the Arab fold. The trip — Assad’s second to the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) in as many years — comes after…

Chinese President Xi Jinping met his “dear friend” Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, seeking both to deepen economic ties with an ally he sees as a useful counterweight to the West and to promote Beijing’s role as a potential peacemaker in Ukraine. Xi was the first leader to meet…

A speeding bus veered off a major expressway in central Bangladesh and plunged into a ditch, killing at least 19 people and injuring dozens, police said. The death toll could rise further as some of the injured passengers are in critical condition, said Anowar Hossain, a police official of Shibchar, where the…

China will reopen its borders to foreign tourists for the first time in three years since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted by allowing all categories of visas to be issued from Wednesday. The removal of this last cross-border control measure imposed to guard against COVID-19 comes after authorities last month declared…

Four years before Li Qiang gained notoriety as the force behind the two-month COVID-19 lockdown of Shanghai, the man who became China’s premier on Saturday worked quietly behind the scenes to drive a bold revamp of the megacity’s sclerotic stock market. Li’s back-channelling — sources said he bypassed the China…

Israeli troops martyred 11 Palestinians Wednesday in a raid on the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, while more than 80 suffered gunshot wounds, the Palestinian health ministry said. The Israeli army said the raid targeted suspects “in a hideout apartment” accused of shootings in the West Bank. It added…

A desert bloom triggered by heavier than usual winter rains has carpeted the sands of northern Saudi Arabia with purple flowers, drawing sightseers from across the Arabian Peninsula. Muhammad al-Mutairi drove nearly six hours from his hometown in the centre of the kingdom to see the rare burst of colour…

Saudi Arabia will send its first-ever woman astronaut on a space mission later this year, state media has reported, in the latest move to revamp the kingdom’s ultra-conservative image. Rayyana Barnawi will join fellow Saudi male astronaut Ali Al-Qarni on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) “during the second quarter…

A gunman opened fire on Monday night at Michigan State University’s main campus, killing three people and injuring five, some severely, before he was found dead hours later, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot, police said. Few official details about the gun violence were immediately available, but Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of…

A huge earthquake killed more than 2,300 people and injured thousands more on Monday in Turkey and northwest Syria, flattening apartment blocks and heaping more destruction on Syrian cities already devastated by years of war. The magnitude 7.8 quake, which hit before sunrise in bitter winter weather, was the worst…

A 16-year-old girl died on Saturday after being mauled by a shark in a river in Western Australia’s state capital Perth after she jumped in the water to swim with a pod of dolphins. Police said they were called to the scene of the attack about 3:45 pm Saturday (0745 GMT) near…

The Somalian forces have killed 39 al-Shabab militants after heavy fighting near the central town of Harardhere. The Commander for the Infantry Mohamed Tahlil Bihi told the state-run Radio Mogadishu that the local forces backed by international partners killed the militants who had burned down a commuter bus when escaping…

In Afghanistan, at least 124 people died in freezing temperatures during the last two weeks. According to State Ministry for Disaster Management spokesman, about 70,000 livestock had also perished in what is the coldest winter in a decade. It is pertinent to mention that many aid agencies suspended operations in…

Ten people were killed in a mass shooting in the city of Monterey Park, California, at a ballroom dance venue late on Saturday, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. The suspected gunman fled the scene, and police were still trying to find him, the department said early on Sunday morning. There…

At least 68 people were killed on Sunday when a domestic flight crashed in Pokhara in Nepal, the country’s Civil Aviation Authority said, in the worst air crash in three decades in the small Himalayan nation. Hundreds of rescue workers were scouring the hillside where the Yeti Airlines flight, carrying…

Afghanistan’s Taliban-led Interim Government has signed a contract with a Chinese company to extract oil from the Amu Darya basin and develop an oil reserve in the country’s northern Sar-e Pul province. According to state-run Bakhtar News Agency, the contract was signed by acting Minister of Mines and Petroleum Sheikh…

The Taliban government in Afghanistan Thursday announced its forces killed several militants, most of them foreign nationals, from a Daesh network that was behind the attack on the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul last month. On December 2, Daesh militants stormed the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul, targeting Chargé d’Affaires (CdA) to Afghanistan Ubaid-ur-Rehman Nizamani. The…