Region

NEW DELHI: Sri Lanka’s leader began his second state visit to India in 17 months Friday in a trip that underscores his island nation’s delicate efforts to balance relations with regional superpowers India and China. President Maithripala Sirisena was slated to join Prime Minister Narendra Modi for dinner after arriving during the day from Britain. […]

NEW DELHI: India’s top court Friday ordered state governments to provide free meals to schoolchildren even during the summer break as the country reels from the impact of one of the worst droughts on record. Free lunches are offered to some 120 million students throughout India in what is the world’s largest school feeding programme, […]

NAYPYITAW: The commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s military said on Friday the army was carrying out its duty under the leadership of the newly elected civilian government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, aiming to assuage worry over tension between them. Relations between the armed forces and Suu Kyi will define the success of Myanmar’s emergence […]

BISHKEK: Security services in Kyrgyzstan said Friday that they had arrested three politicians including a former minister on charges of plotting a coup, ahead of an anti-government rally later this month. Three members of a group called the People’s Parliament movement were arrested late Thursday on coup charges in the Central Asian country’s capital Bishkek, […]

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has deported three foreign suspected militants, two of them Russians allegedly involved with Islamic State and a Sri Lankan, the country’s police chief said on Friday. Muslim-majority Malaysia has been on high alert since an armed attack by militants linked to Islamic State in Jakarta, the capital of neighbouring Indonesia, in January, […]

  DHAKA: The family of a 12-year-old Bangladeshi girl who suffers from a rare condition that causes thick hair to cover her face and body have spoken out as they seek to fund surgery to give their daughter a chance at a normal life. Bithi Akhtar suffers from Byars-Jurkiewicz syndrome and a complication known as […]

ANKARA: Turkish courts on Friday gave conflicting rulings on whether the nationalist opposition can hold a party congress on Sunday which could be crucial to President Tayyip Erdogan’s hopes of winning support for a stronger presidency, broadcasters said. Several hundred members of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have launched a bid to challenge Devlet Bahceli, […]

DEVESELU: The United States switched on an $800 million missile shield in Romania on Thursday that it sees as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states but the Kremlin says is aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal. To the music of military bands at the remote Deveselu air base, senior U.S. […]

BEIRUT: On a podium decorated as a bunker from the Iran-Iraq war, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad woos a crowd of hundreds with an anti-Western speech reminiscent of his fiery addresses as Iran’s president. At the end of the event in Jiroft in southeast Iran, held partly to honour victims of the 1980-88 war, some of the crowd […]

ANKARA/BERLIN: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan ratcheted up the pressure on Europe over a landmark migrants deal on Thursday, accusing the bloc of setting new hurdles for visa-free travel and threatening Ankara may go its own way if they failed to agree. In Berlin, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also dug in his heels, saying the […]