Category: World

Iraqi anti-government protesters clashed with security forces and kept up their sit-ins on Sunday, as a rights group warned a deadly crackdown could spiral into a “bloodbath”. Mass rallies calling for an overhaul of the ruling system have rocked the capital Baghdad and the Shia-majority south since early October, but political forces closed ranks this […]

BENGALURU: Moo­dy’s Inves­t­ors Service cut India’s ratings outlook to “negative” from “stable”, citing increasing risks that Asia’s third largest economy will grow at a slower pace than in the past, sending stock markets nearly 1 per cent lower at Friday’s close. However, Moody’s retained the country’s foreign and local currency ratings at ‘Baa2’. The cut […]

WASHINGTON: There has been a dramatic increase in stubble burning in the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, which is causing an equally dramatic increase in air pollution across the region, says a report released by the US space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Nasa collected data from Oct 21 to 29 […]

BERLIN: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a stark warning against China and Russia on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, urging Western allies to defend hard-won freedoms. Stressing that “we can never take … things for granted”, he said the 70-year-old Nato alliance too “runs the […]

Hong Kong police said on Saturday they have arrested three pro-democracy lawmakers over a brawl in parliament, deepening the city’s crisis a day after the death of a student sent tensions soaring. The international finance hub has been upended by five months of huge and increasingly violent pro-democracy protests but Beijing has refused to give in […]

Wildfires razing Australia’s drought-stricken east coast have left three people dead and several missing, more than 30 injured and over 150 homes destroyed, officials said on Saturday. Around 1,500 firefighters were battling more than 70 fires across Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, with the most intense in the northeast, where flames were fanned […]

BEIJING: Chinese leader Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron declared on Wednesday that the Paris climate pact was “irreversible”, showing a united front after Washington formally withdrew from the accord this week. The joint declaration came at the end of Macron’s second visit to China, which started on Monday in Shanghai and included talks […]

Vaping devices and the chemicals they deliver — increasingly popular among teens — may damage the cardiovascular system, a study said on Thursday, adding to a growing chorus of concern over injury and deaths related to e-cigarettes. The latest findings, published in the journal Cardiovascular Research, come after the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention […]

NEW DELHI: India has deployed thousands of additional security forces and roped in about 16,000 “digital volunteers” to sanitise social media of inflammatory posts ahead of a crucial Supreme Court verdict on a disputed religious site. Hindus and Muslims have for decades been bitterly divided over the 16th-century Babri mosque in Ayodhya, a city in […]

More than 80 farmers have been arrested in northern India for starting fires that contributed to the recent pollution crisis in New Delhi and other cities, officials said on Thursday. Each winter the post-harvest burning of crop stubble covers swaths of the region in toxic smog, which combines with car and factory emissions to turn […]