International

LIBREVILLE: General Brice Oligui Nguema, who led a coup last week that toppled Gabon’s 55-year-old ruling dynasty, took the oath of office as interim president on Monday, promising “free, transparent and credible elections” to restore civilian rule but without giving a time frame. He also vowed amnesty to political prisoners, in a speech in which he insisted the coup had …

NICOSIA: Five Israeli tourists were remanded in Cyprus police custody on Monday in connection with an alleged gang rape of a young British woman in the popular resort of Ayia Napa, authorities said. The five men, aged between 19 and 20, were arrested on Sunday after a 20-year-old British tourist told police she was gang raped at a hotel room …

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Moscow is just two weeks away from supplying free grain to six African nations, after scrapping a deal allowing Ukrainian food exports through the Black Sea. His comments during a press conference with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the resort city of Sochi after the two leaders held talks over …

PARIS: France received on Monday five Afghan women “threatened by the Taliban” after repeated requests it creates a humanitarian corridor for women shut out of public life, an official said. Since returning to power in August 2021, Taliban authorities have imposed a strict interpretation of Islam, with women bearing the brunt of laws the United Nations has labelled “gender apartheid”. …

PARIS: French authorities are watching over 500 schools for signs pupils could be violating a newly announced ban on the abaya Muslim dress for women, as children across the country return to class, the education minister said on Monday. The government announced last month that it was banning the abaya in schools, saying it broke the rules on secularism in education that …

THE social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, has been accused in a civil US lawsuit of helping Saudi Arabia commit grave human rights abuses against its users, The Guardian reported. The report accuses the social media firm of, among other things, disclosing confidential user data at the request of Saudi authorities in July and December 2015 at a much higher …

In India, history textbooks tell us that in the long line of Mughal rulers, Aurangzeb was possibly the most tyrannical. He destroyed, looted like no other and didn’t even spare his own family. Yet, the British immortalised him by naming a key street in Delhi after him. When I went there, I found it a most fancy address; ornate architecture …

Two people have been detained after using an excavator to dig a hole in the Great Wall of China, state broadcaster CCTV said. Police in Shanxi province followed tracks made by machinery used to dig a shortcut through a segment of the wall — remains of the immense structure built by China’s emperors to deter foreign invaders. The suspects admitted under questioning …

India was buzzing with speculation on Tuesday over rumoured plans to scrap the official usage of the country’s English name after a state-issued invite sent to world leaders referred to it as “Bharat”. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has worked to remove lingering symbols of British rule from India’s urban landscape, political institutions and history books, but its next move …

KYIV: Russian drones targeted Ukraine’s southern Odesa region in the early hours of Sunday, with Moscow hitting a Danube port on the border with NATO member Romania in an attack condemned by Bucharest. The attack came on the eve of a summit in Russia between Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who hopes to revive the Black Sea …