International

DAMASCUS: Landmines planted by jihadists killed 10 civilians in central Syria on Monday, state media reported, in the latest in a wave of deadly incidents involving truffle hunters. “Nine citizens were killed and two others injured” when a landmine left by the militant Islamic State group blew up, the official SANA news agency said. It said the victims had been …

UNITED NATIONS: More than 70 countries were in debt stress amid a global cost of living crisis, the president of the UN General Assembly Csaba Krösi warned on Monday, days after a UN agency called for a 30 per cent debt-cut for stressed countries. Addressing the 52nd session of the Human Rights Council, Mr Krösi noted that the countries facing …

WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk has called US media “racist” after multiple American newspapers announced they would stop publishing a popular comic strip whose creator called Black people a hate group. Musk, who owns electric car company Tesla and social network Twitter, tweeted on Sunday in response to an article about a rant by Scott Adams, creator of the long-running “Dilbert” …

NEW DELHI: Members of a leading political party held protests across India on Monday, after one of their main leaders, a top minister in Delhi’s city government, was arrested by a federal agency over allegations of corruption. Several hundred party workers gathered amid a heavy police presence in Delhi around the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) headquarters, with more than a …

COLOMBO: The World Bank has offered a lifeline to three private banks in bankrupt Sri Lanka on Monday, lending them $400 million to finance imports of essential food and medicines with an IMF bailout stalled. The World Bank’s private sector funding arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is lending the trio the funds with Sri Lanka’s economic crisis still rumbling …

OSMANIYE: An earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.6 and depth of 6.15 km, shook southeast Turkiye on Monday, killing one person, injuring 110 and causing 29 buildings to collapse, Turkish authorities said, triggering frantic work to rescue several people believed trapped in rubble. The epicentre of the tremor was the Yesilyurt district in the Malatya province, which was hit by …

An Australian archaeologist and two Papua New Guinea researchers held for a week by 20 armed men in a remote part of the Pacific Island nation were released on Sunday, while their captors remain at large, a local official told Reuters. Professor Bryce Barker and doctoral student Teppsy Beni from the University of Southern Queensland, and Papua New Guinea National Museum …

Hong Kong police said on Sunday they had arrested three people in connection with the murder of 28-year old model Abby Choi, whose legs were found in a refrigerator in a house on the city’s outskirts, along with tools used in dismembering bodies. Police found Choi’s body on Friday but have yet to locate her head, torso and hands. They …

President Vladimir Putin has cast the confrontation with the West over the Ukraine war as an existential battle for the survival of Russia and the Russian people — and said he is forced to take into account Nato’s nuclear capabilities. A year since ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin is increasingly presenting the war as a make-or-break moment in Russian history — …

GENEVA: Banks in Switzerland are holding a substantial amount of millions of dollars Lebanese central bank chief Riad Salameh is accused of embezzling, Swiss media reported on Sunday. Salameh, 72, faces investigations related to suspicions of money laundering and illicit enrichment in Lebanon and abroad after he amassed a fortune in the country mired in a financial crisis. A Lebanese …