International

JERUSALEM: Three Israeli soldiers and a member of Egypt’s security forces were killed on Saturday in a rare exchange of fire near the border between the two countries, official sources from both sides said. The Israeli army said an Egyptian assailant shot dead two soldiers “in the early morning… while they secured a military post at the Egyptian border” on …

WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden on Saturday signed into law a debt ceiling bill passed by Congress after weeks of wrangling, moving to avert a catastrophic, self-induced default in the world’s biggest economy. The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 authorises the government to extend the so-called debt ceiling to renew borrowing, keeping the bills paid. The Treasury had warned that …

BALASORE: When India’s worst train accident in more than 20 years happened just outside his home, Hiranmay Rath said it felt “like the sky was falling on us or the earth was cracking open”. What followed was an unimaginable nightmare of corpses, body parts and suffering. The college student stopped scrolling Facebook on his phone and rushed outside, to be confronted by …

India’s Railway Minister said on Sunday that the cause and people responsible for the country’s worst train crash in decades had been identified, pointing to an electronic signal system without giving further details. “We have identified the cause of the accident and the people responsible for it,” India’s Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told news agency ANI, but said it was “not …

A landslide in China’s southwestern Sichuan province has killed 14 people and left five missing, Chinese state media outlet CCTV reported on Sunday. The landslide occurred at around 6am on Sunday morning in a mountainous area near the Leshan city in the south of the province. More than 180 rescue workers have been dispatched to the site, with search and rescue operations …

Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu told Asia’s top security summit on Sunday that conflict with the United States would be an “unbearable disaster” but that his country sought dialogue over confrontation. Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Li said the world was big enough for China and the US to grow together — remarks made days after he refused …

BELGOROD: Two civilians were killed on Friday in shelling on Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, while Moscow’s forces attacked Kyiv for a sixth day in a row. Over the past few days, hundreds of residents have fled villages near Russia’s border with Ukraine as shelling intensified in the southwestern Belgorod region. Earlier in the day, the regional …

TOKYO: Hundreds of thousands of residents in Japan were urged to evacuate on Friday as tropical storm Mawar brought heavy rain, causing several rivers to overflow and leaving two people missing. A non-compulsory evacuation order was issued to more than 410,000 people in Toyota in the central Aichi region, as well as in other parts of western and central Japan. …

THE US Air Force has denied conducting an experiment in which an AI-enabled drone attacked its operator after considering them a hindrance in completing the mission, BBC has reported. The clarification has come after a presentation by a US Air Force colonel at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s conference in May went viral. “The Department of the Air Force has not conducted any such …

COLOMBO: Cash-strapped Sri Lanka’s economy showed “tentative signs of improvement” but recovery remains challenging and Colombo must pursue painful reforms, the IMF said on Friday. The International Monetary Fund’s Deputy Managing Director Kenji Okamura said the country was emerging from its unprecedented crisis thanks to reforms including the doubling of taxes, spending cuts and the scrapping of subsidies. A currency …