MOSCOW – The Kremlin said yesterday any F-16s delivered to Ukraine would be shot down and have little impact on the battlefield. This was in response to reports that the first fighter jets have arrived in Ukraine. “Their number will gradually decrease; they will be shot down… But of course, these deliveries will not have...
CARACAS – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, facing mounting pressure to offer evidence his election victory was valid, said Wednesday that opposition leaders Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia should be imprisoned following deadly protests across the country. “They should be behind bars,” the leader told reporters. The opposition, which claims its candidate Gonzalez Urrutia...
TEHRAN – Iran held a funeral ceremony on Thursday with calls for revenge after the killing in Tehran of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike blamed on Israel. Thousands of mourners paid respects to Haniyeh as the Israeli military confirmed that an air strike in Gaza last month killed the Hamas military chief,...
KANO – A bomb exploded in a teahouse in a village in northeast Nigeria, killing 19 people and wounding two dozen more in the second major attack in a few weeks, security sources said yesterday. The blast in Kawuri village in Borno State on Wednesday evening was one of the deadliest in recent years in...
AUSTIN – Joe Biden unveiled plans on Monday for sweeping US Supreme Court reforms, as he seeks to cement his legacy in the twilight of his presidency despite Republicans branding the proposals dead on arrival. Stung by shock rulings on abortion and other topics, and by a series of scandals involving the conservative-dominated court, Biden...
BENGALURU – Landslides in India triggered by pounding monsoon rains have so far killed at least 36 people, with hundreds more feared to be trapped under mud and debris, officials said yesterday. The southern coastal state of Kerala has been battered by torrential downpours, and the collapse of a key bridge at the disaster site...
The UK government has dropped plans to challenge the right of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In May, the chief prosecutor of the ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The previous Conservative UK...
PORT SUDAN – Amnesty International yesterday urged the United Nations, in a report on weapons flooding the war-torn country, to extend the arms embargo on Darfur to cover all of Sudan. The 15-month war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces “is being fuelled by an almost unimpeded supply of weapons into...
BEIJING – Flash floods in northern and southwest China have killed at least 20 people and left dozens missing, state media said on Saturday, after a week of deadly downpours across the country. Several vehicles in northwestern Shaanxi province plunged into a swollen river late Friday after a bridge collapsed, with at least 12 people...
DAKAR – It was only when 12-year-old Senegalese schoolboy, Lassou Samb, prepared to sit for his end-of-year exams that his lack of legal documentation finally caught up with him. Like many young people in the West African country, Samb was never registered at birth, an oversight that has potentially profound consequences for his education. Hundreds...