LAMPEDUSA (Italy): The tiny Italian island of Lampedusa struggled yesterday to cope with a surge in migrant boats from North Africa after numbers peaked at 7,000 people—equivalent to the entire local population. The island’s reception centre, built to house fewer than 400 people, was overwhelmed with men, women and children […]
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DERNA: Thousands of people were killed and at least 10,000 were missing in Libya in floods caused by a huge Mediterranean storm that burst dams, swept away buildings and wiped out as much as a quarter of the eastern coastal city of Derna. A senior medic in Derna told Reuters […]
JAKARTA: Southeast Asia’s regional bloc Asean will not be held hostage by the crisis in Myanmar, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said today, adding the block will continue its peace efforts.
BEIJING: China’s top security agency has hinted that any meeting between President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden in San Francisco later this year will depend on the United States “showing sufficient sincerity”. Biden on Sunday (Sep 3) expressed disappointment that Xi was not attending an upcoming summit of […]
BANGKOK: Thailand’s king has commuted former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s eight-year prison sentence to one year, the royal gazette said today, a day after the billionaire submitted a request for pardon. The country’s most famous politician returned to Thailand last week in a dramatic homecoming after 15 years abroad in […]
GENEVA: people were killed in a crackdown on an anti-UN protest in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). “There needs to be an investigation… and the perpetrators need to be brought to justice,” UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva. The UN is in touch with the […]
MADRID: Spanish society must break a “pact of silence” and stop normalizing sexist behaviour and support women brave enough to speak out when it happens, acting Equality Minister Irene Montero said on Wednesday. Montero said in an interview with Reuters she hoped the furore created by Spanish Football Association (RFEF) […]
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden’s administration has for the first time approved direct US military aid to Taiwan under an assistance programme aimed at foreign governments, officials said on Wednesday (Aug 30), as worries grow over China. The State Department informed Congress on Tuesday of the US$80 million package, which is […]
BRASILIA: Russia has informed Brazil’s aircraft investigation authority that it will not probe the crash of the Brazilian-made Embraer jet that killed mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin under international rules “at the moment”, the Brazilian agency told Reuters on Tuesday. Prigozhin, two top lieutenants of his Wagner Group and four bodyguards […]
NEW DELHI: India issued a “strong protest” to China yesterday after a Beijing map claimed land that New Delhi says is theirs, including territory close to where the neighbours battled in 2020. “We have today lodged a strong protest through diplomatic channels with the Chinese side on the so-called 2023 […]