Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in rebel-held northwest Syria on Sunday, the deadliest attack on the country this year, a war monitor said.

Forest fires in Canada left Montreal blanketed with smog on Sunday, giving it the worst air quality of any major city in the world, according to a pollution monitor.

About a dozen shackled workers in India were rescued from “torture” in a chain gang digging wells for 12 hours a day without wages, a government rights body said yesterday.

The cheap, easy, and fast production of synthetic drugs has radically transformed illicit drug markets around the world, with “lethal results”, the United Nations warned Sunday.

The headquarters of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin led a mutiny over the weekend that rattled President Vladimir Putin’s rule, said yesterday it was working in “normal mode.”

At least 14 civilians have been killed in war-torn Sudan’s capital as rival forces are locked in a key battle over control of the Khartoum police headquarters, activists said yesterday.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims yesterday walked or rode buses to a giant tented city near Makkah for the climax of the annual hajj that Saudi officials say could break attendance records.

Israel’s nationalist-religious government yesterday approved the construction of 5,700 additional housing units for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, despite US pressure to halt settlement expansion that Washington sees as an obstacle to peace with Palestinians.

Ukrainian forces have recaptured another formerly Russian-held settlement on the southern front between the two armies, deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar said yesterday.

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims walked or rode buses Monday to a giant tented city near Makkah for the climax of the annual hajj that Saudi officials say could break attendance records

The Hajj, a religious pilgrimage for Muslims and one of the largest gatherings of humans on Earth, begins in Saudi Arabia on June 26 and ends July 1

The US Coast Guard said on Sunday that it is investigating the cause of the implosion of the Titan submersible

With more than 2.5 billion users, YouTube is without a doubt the largest social media site after Google

Wagner mercenaries headed back to their base on Sunday after Russia's President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow their leader to avoid treason charges and accept exile in neighbouring Belarus

President Xiomara Castro declared a curfew Sunday in a region of Honduras where suspected hitmen hired by drug traffickers shot and killed 11 people in a billiard hall

The unprecedented challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin by Wagner fighters has exposed fresh “cracks” in the strength of his leadership that may take weeks or months to play out, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said yesterday.

Russian air strikes killed at least 13 people in rebel-held northwest Syria yesterday, the deadliest attack on the war-torn country this year, a war monitor said.

Wagner mercenaries were headed back to base yesterday after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow their leader to avoid treason charges and accept exile in Belarus.

US Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland will lead a high-level delegation to Bangladesh early July.

Vast crowds of robed Muslim faithful walked solemn circles around the Kaaba, the black cube at Makkah’s Grand Mosque yesterday to begin the biggest hajj pilgrimage in several years.