International

MOSCOW: A Nasa astronaut, a Russian cosmonaut and Belarus’s first ever space traveller on Saturday returned to Earth safely after a fortnight aboard the International Space Station, Russia’s Roscosmos agency reported. “Today, at 10:17am Moscow time (0717 GMT), the descent vehicle of Sozuz MS-24 manned spacecraft landed near the Kazakh city of Zhezkazgan,” Roscosmos reported. “The (vessel’s) deorbit and its …

PARIS: Sometime between now and September, a massive explosion 3,000 light years from Earth will flare up in the night sky, giving amateur astronomers a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness this space oddity. The binary star system in the constellation Corona Borealis — “northern crown” — is normally too dim to see with the naked eye. But every 80 years or …

THE HAGUE: Climate activist Greta Thunberg was detained twice by Dutch police on Saturday after she and a group of marchers blocked a main road in The Hague to protest against fossil fuel subsidies. Earlier, Thunberg joined hundreds of protesters on a walk from The Hague’s city centre to the nearby A12 arterial highway that connects the seat of the …

QUITO: Ecuadoran authorities stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito on Friday to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas, who had been granted political asylum there, prompting Mexico to sever diplomatic ties after the “violation of international law”. Images showed police special forces massed outside the embassy and at least one of them scaling its walls, which were already surrounded by …

NEW DELHI: An Indian academic detained for almost six years without trial has been granted bail by the Supreme Court, highlighting the country’s use of harsh anti-terror laws decried by rights activists. Shoma Sen, 66, a former professor of English at Nagpur University, was arrested in 2018. She was one of 16 activists and academics held for allegedly inciting violence …

DAMASCUS: Seven children were killed in southern Syria’s Daraa province on Saturday when an “explosive device” detonated, state media reported. “Seven children” were killed “and two other people were injured, one of them a woman, when an explosive device planted by terrorists” went off in the city of Sanamayn, state news agency SANA reported, quoting a police source. The Syrian Observatory for …

GENEVA: The World Health Organisation said on Saturday that Gaza’s largest hospital had been reduced to ashes by Israel’s latest siege, leaving an “empty shell” with many bodies. Israeli forces pulled out of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week military operation, during which it said it had battled Palestinian militants inside what was once the …

United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chinese Premier Li Qiang sounded a hopeful tone on US-China cooperation on Sunday, though the American policymaker noted both sides cannot shy away from tough conversations. The US-China relationship can only move forward with direct and open communication, Yellen told Li, after arriving in the Chinese capital from the southern city of Guangzhou. …

An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned on Sunday that Israeli embassies are “no longer safe” after a strike in Syria which Tehran blamed on Israel killed seven Revolutionary Guards members. “The embassies of the Zionist regime are no longer safe,” Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency. Tehran has vowed to avenge Monday’s air …

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military dismissed two officers and formally reprimanded senior commanders on Friday after an inquiry into the killing of seven aid workers in an air strike in Gaza this week found serious errors and breaches of procedure. The inquiry found Israeli forces mistakenly believed they were attacking Hamas fighters when drones hit the three vehicles of the World …