Category: World

As Notre-Dame in Paris burned, US President Donald Trump tweeted some advice to French firefighters. “Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!” But doing that would have brought the ancient cathedral crashing down, French fire chiefs told AFP Tuesday. “Everything would have collapsed,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bernier, a fire chief who […]

The Gulf state of Bahrain Tuesday jailed 138 people and revoked their citizenship for plotting to form a “terror” group with links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the public prosecutor said. The verdict was swiftly condemned by the Bahraini opposition, while human rights group Amnesty International decried the “mockery of justice” and “mass arbitrary denaturalisation”. The […]

French investigators interviewed construction workers involved in renovation work at the Notre-Dame Cathedral on Tuesday as they sought to identify the source of a devastating blaze at the monument that has sent shockwaves through France and the world. Donations and offers of help began to pour in as day broke over the City of Light, revealing the […]

WASHINGTON: Both Tal­iban and Afghan government officials said on Mon­day that dozens of women would attend the next round of Doha peace talks, which formally begin on April 19, although the Afghan media reported that initial talks had already started. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid telephoned reporters in Kabul on Monday and told them that “there […]

JAKARTA: Indonesia’s heavy metal-loving leader Joko Widodo faces off against ex-military general Prabowo Subianto in the race to lead the world’s third-biggest democracy on Wednesday, a re-run of the 2014 election contest narrowly won by Widodo. A record 245,000 candidates are running for public office from the presidency down to local legislator positions, including an […]

UNITED NATIONS: Yemen’s government and Houthi rebels have accepted a detailed plan for a much-delayed pullback from the flashpoint city of Hodeida, the UN envoy said on Monday, but no timetable was announced for the withdrawals. The redeployment of forces was agreed in December under a ceasefire deal reached in Sweden that offered the best hope in […]

LONDON: Thousands of environmental activists paralysed parts of central London on Monday by blocking Marble Arch, Oxford Circus and Waterloo Bridge in a bid to force the government to do more to tackle climate change. Under sunny skies, activists sang songs or held signs that read “There is no Planet B” and “Extinction is forever” […]

A raging fire that tore through Notre-Dame Cathedral in central Paris was under control early on Tuesday after the blaze brought its towering spire and roof crashing to the ground, wiping out centuries of priceless heritage central to French culture and history. French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to rebuild the cathedral described as the soul of the […]

India’s finance minister said on Monday fast economic growth and rapid urbanisation would slash the number of people in extreme poverty by 2021 and end it completely in the decade after that. More than 21 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2011, when the last census […]