The US Senate on Sunday passed a sweeping $430 billion bill intended to fight climate change, lower drug prices and raise some corporate taxes, a major victory for President Joe Biden that Democrats hope will aid their chances of keeping control of Congress in this year's elections.

Israel and Palestinian militants have agreed to a truce in Gaza from yesterday evening as mediated by Cairo, sources said, after a weekend-long pounding of Palestinian targets by Israel triggered longer-range rocket attacks against its cities.

Amnesty International yesterday apologised for “distress and anger” caused by a report accusing Ukraine of endangering civilians which infuriated President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and triggered the resignation of its Kviy office head.

The United States is to take part in a joint military exercise with India less than 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the South Asian country’s disputed border with China.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in South Africa yesterday, kicking off a three-nation African visit as Washington scales up diplomacy to counter Russian influence on the continent.

Ukraine yesterday accused Russia of again shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhzhia, and called for new international sanctions on Moscow for “nuclear terror”.

Twelve Polish pilgrims died and 30 others were injured yesterday when a bus  veered off a highway and crashed into a ditch in northern Croatia, authorities said.

A Texas jury ordered US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday to pay $45.2 million in punitive damages for falsely claiming that the deadly 2012 Sandy Hook elementary shooting was a “hoax.”

Kyiv and Moscow yesterday accused each other of striking Europe’s largest nuclear site, causing a reactor stoppage as three grain ships departed Ukraine under a deal to avert food shortages.

Major flooding in California’s Death Valley on Friday stranded approximately 1,000 people, buried cars and shut down all roads into and out of the famously parched national park.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed that Turkey will start paying for some of its Russian natural gas imports in rubles.

Escalation of Violence in Gaza

Israel’s military yesterday warned deadly air strikes against Palestinian militants in Gaza could last a week, as cross-border fire reverberated for a second day in the worst escalation since last year’s war.

“Humanity is playing with a loaded gun” as crises with the potential for nuclear disaster proliferate worldwide, UN head Antonio Guterres said in Hiroshima yesterday, the 77th anniversary of the first atomic bomb attack.

Israeli jets pounded targets in Gaza on Saturday and rocket barrages into southern Israel persisted, raising fears of an escalation after a wave of Israeli airstrikes on the coastal enclave killed at least 12 people, including a 5-year-old girl.

In light of the government’s  latest decision to increase prices of fuel across the country from today (August 6), let’s have a look at fuel prices (per litre) in the major economies of the world as well as Bangladesh’s neighbouring countries.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has provoked Beijing’s ire -- and brought into focus Washington’s deliberately ambiguous foreign policy stance toward the democratic, self-ruled island.

Tensions over developments in Taiwan overshadowed an Asian meeting of foreign ministers yesterday, diverting attention at a forum that had been expected to focus on efforts to end the crisis in Myanmar among other issues.

A senior commander of Islamic Jihad was among more than 15 people killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip yesterday, prompting the militant group to warn Israel has made a “declaration of war”.

World food prices fell sharply in July, partly thanks to a deal between Ukraine and Russia lifting a sea blockade that had stopped Ukrainian grain shipments, a UN agency said yesterday.