Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s first female prime minister and leader of the Danish Social Democrat Party, has joined the Asian University for Women (AUW) in Bangladesh as a patron.

Israel played down the likelihood of a ceasefire in Gaza yesterday after Hamas said it had accepted a proposal from mediators, even as residents fled the city of Rafah in fear of an Israeli assault.

Columbia, the prestigious New York university at the heart of US campus protests against the Israeli offensive in Gaza, announced yesterday that it has canceled the main ceremony for graduating students next week.

French bakers cooked the world’s longest baguette on Sunday at 140.53 metres (461 ft), reclaiming a record for one of the nation’s best-known emblems taken by Italy for five years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered nuclear weapons drills near Ukraine, Moscow said yesterday, in response to “threats” from Western officials to deploy Nato troops to Ukraine.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said yesterday they had exposed a “spy” network aiding the United States and Israel and arrested suspected members of it.

A Myanmar ethnic armed group said yesterday it had captured a military command and taken hundreds of junta personnel prisoner in western Rakhine state, the latest blow to the military.

India’s Election Commission (EC) yesterday warned political parties against misuse of AI-based tools to create deep fakes that distort information or propagate misinformation in the backdrop of manipulated videos targeting top Home Minister Amit Shah and arrest of some workers of opposition party Congress.

In an explosive turn of events yesterday, Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena has called for an anti-terror probe into allegations Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal received political funding from the banned Sikhs For Justice group founded by wanted terrorist Gurpatwant Pannun. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party hit back swiftly via senior leader Saurabh Bhardwaj, who dismissed the call for a probe by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as a “conspiracy” against the party and its leader.

Lebanese official media said an Israeli strike yesterday wounded three people in the country’s east, with Hezbollah saying it launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at an Israeli base in retaliation.

Some 600,000 children packed into Gaza’s Rafah city face “further catastrophe,” Unicef warned yesterday, urging against their forced relocation after Israel ordered an evacuation ahead of its long-threatened ground invasion.

French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen pressed Xi Jinping at a summit in Paris yesterday to use Beijing’s influence to halt the Russian war against Ukraine, also telling the Chinese leader to accept fair global trade rules.

Hamas on Monday agreed to a ceasefire proposal in the seven-month-old war with Israel in Gaza, hours after the Israeli military told residents to evacuate some parts of Rafah, which has been sheltering more than a million displaced people

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Monday that at least 34,735 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during almost seven months of war between Israel and Hamas

American campuses -- home to some of the best and most prestigious universities in the world where numerous world leaders in politics and academia have spent their early years -- have a potent history of student movements that lead to drastic change

Israel called on civilians to evacuate parts of Rafah on Monday in what appeared to be preparation for a long-threatened assault on Hamas holdouts in the southern Gaza Strip city where more than a million war-displaced Palestinians have been sheltering

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the Russian military to hold nuclear weapons drills involving the navy and troops based near Ukraine, the defence ministry said today

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters today that Israel's Rafah evacuation order ahead of an expected offensive is a "dangerous escalation that will have consequences".

The Biden administration paused a shipment of US-made ammunition to Israel last week amid the latter's ongoing attack on Gaza, but the reasons for doing so were not clear, according to media outlets in the US and Israel

Medics and first responders in Gaza said 16 people were killed in Israeli air strikes in the southern city of Rafah Sunday, hours after Hamas rockets had killed three Israeli soldiers earlier in the day