No breakthrough yet in Gaza ceasefire talks

Hamas negotiators stayed in Cairo for a third day of ceasefire talks yesterday after two days yielded no breakthrough, as a deadline approached to halt the fighting in time for Ramadan, free Israeli hostages and stave off famine in the Gaza Strip.
5 March 2024

Meta suffers global Facebook, Instagram outage

Meta suffered a highly unusual outage of all its social media platforms yesterday with users of Facebook, Instagram and Threads locked out of their accounts. 
5 March 2024

Iran executed 834 people last year

Iran executed at least 834 people last year, the highest number since 2015, as capital punishment in the Islamic republic surged to a “staggering” level, human rights groups said yesterday.
5 March 2024

Bezos dethrones Musk

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took back his spot as the world’s richest man on Monday, dethroning Elon Musk on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bezos’ net worth stands at USD200 billion, according to the tracker, surpassing the Tesla chief’s USD198 billion.
5 March 2024

Emaciated children seen at Gaza hospitals

Two Palestinian toddlers with sunken eyes and emaciated faces, one in a yellow cardigan and the other in a stripy top, were lying side by side on a bed in a Gaza clinic, their thin, bony legs protruding from diapers that looked too big for them.
5 March 2024

Facebook, Messenger, Instagram now restored

Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram faced a global outage for nearly an hour
5 March 2024

The Ambani pre-wedding extravaganza in pictures

Anant's pre-wedding bash was attended by Bill Gates, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, fellow Indian billionaires Gautam Adani, as well as many cricketers and Bollywood film stars such as Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan.
5 March 2024

Modi congratulates new Pakistan PM Sharif

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Pakistani counterpart Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday for his return to the premiership, a rare expression of goodwill between leaders of the two nuclear-armed rivals
5 March 2024

Iran executed 834 people last year, highest since 2015: rights groups

Iran executed a "staggering" total of at least 834 people last year, the highest number since 2015 as capital punishment surged in the Islamic republic, two rights groups said today
5 March 2024

Children starving to death in northern Gaza hospitals: WHO chief

An aid mission to two hospitals in northern Gaza found horrifying scenes of children dying of starvation, amid dire shortages of food, fuel and medicines, the World Health Organization said Monday
5 March 2024

Bezos dethrones Musk to reclaim title of world's richest man

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took back his spot as the world's richest man on Monday, dethroning Elon Musk on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index
5 March 2024

Ex-Twitter executives sue Musk for unpaid severance

Former top executives of Twitter sued Elon Musk yesterday saying he has failed to pay them nearly $130 million after the billionaire took over the social media company and dismissed them
5 March 2024

China sets ambitious 5 percent growth target for 2024

China today set a growth target of around five percent for 2024, an ambitious objective analysts said would be a challenge to meet given the severe headwinds battering the world's second-largest economy
5 March 2024

China violating ‘fundamental rights’

UN human rights chief Volker Turk yesterday said China was violating fundamental rights in its Xinjiang and Tibet regions and called on Beijing to change course.
4 March 2024

How far one can go to avoid a relative

The Indian police has arrested a 29-year-old Bangladeshi national for allegedly sending a hoax e-mail to the Delhi airport about an explosive in a Kolkata-bound flight.
4 March 2024

States can’t bar Trump’s candidacy

The US Supreme Court handed Donald Trump a major victory yesterday, barring states from disqualifying candidates for federal office under a constitutional provision involving insurrection and reversing Colorado’s exclusion of him from its ballot.
4 March 2024

Ukraine is ‘Russia’

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and an ally of President Vladimir Putin, described Ukraine yesterday as part of Russia and said what he called historical parts of Russia needed to “come home.”
4 March 2024

Spotify Case: Apple hit with 1.8b euro EU fine

The EU yesterday hit Apple with a more than 1.8-billion-euro fine (USD1.9 billion) for violating the bloc’s laws by preventing European users from accessing information about alternative, cheaper music streaming services.
4 March 2024

Gaza ‘powder keg’ can spark wider war

The Gaza war between Israel and Hamas is a “powder keg” with the potential to spark broader conflict in the Middle East, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said yesterday.
4 March 2024

Imran Khan’s MPs denied reserved seats in parliament

Pakistan’s election commission yesterday blocked lawmakers loyal to jailed ex-prime minister Imran Khan from taking a share of parliamentary seats reserved for women and minorities, after a poll marred by rigging claims.
4 March 2024