International

LONDON: Britain’s foreign minister Liz Truss, the frontrunner to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, was forced to backtrack on one of her most striking pledges a day after announcing it following a backlash from fellow Conservatives and opposition parties. In the first big misstep of her campaign, Truss set out plans to save billions of pounds a year in …

At least 112 women have been hospitalised after a gas leak at an apparel manufacturing plant in India, police said on Wednesday. The workers complained of nausea and vomiting at a plant in the Atchyutapuram district of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Tuesday night. “The women are all stable. There are no deaths. Investigations are going on,” senior …

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi left Taiwan on Wednesday after pledging solidarity and hailing its democracy, leaving a trail of Chinese anger over her brief visit to the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own. China demonstrated its outrage over the highest-level US visit to the island in 25 years with a burst of military activity in …

Sri Lanka faces a “great danger” with fuel shortages sparked by its unprecedented economic crisis set to continue at least till the year’s end, President Ranil Wickremesinghe warned on Wednesday. The 73-year-old, who was propelled to power last month after his predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced to flee the country and resign after months of protests, said the financial meltdown …

India confirmed its first monkeypox death on Monday, a young man in the southern state of Kerala, in what is only the fourth known fatality from the disease in the current outbreak. Last week, Spain reported two monkeypox-related deaths and Brazil its first. The death in India is also the first in Asia. The World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global …

TEHRAN: Iran said on Monday that it remained “optimistic” about a possible revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, even as the head of the country’s atomic energy organisation expressed his country’s reluctance to pursue the weaponisation of nuclear materials. Iran has the technical capability to produce an atomic bomb but has no intention of doing so, the Fars news agency quoted Mohammad Eslami as …

LONDON: British Conservative frontrunner Liz Truss won another heavyweight endorsement on Monday as party members began a month of voting to decide the next occupant of 10 Downing Street, the seat of the UK’s prime minister. Truss’s lagging rival Rishi Sunak vied to make up lost ground with a plan for future tax cuts — and potentially to host a …

DHAKA: Robiul Islam, 29, sits in the dark at his home in the Kalurghat neighbourhood of Chattogram city, suffering through yet another power cut, as Bangladesh struggles with costly and inadequate natural gas imports amid a global hike in energy prices. “Over the last two months, we are seeing power outages that we have not seen in quite a few …

SYDNEY: Aboriginal Senator Lidia Thorpe branded Britain’s Elizabeth II a “colonising” queen on Monday, as the recently elected lawmaker reluctantly swore allegiance while taking the oath of office. In a flash of protest, Greens senator Thorpe raised her right fist in a Black Power salute as she begrudgingly swore to serve the 96-year-old monarch, who is still Australia’s head of …

WASHINGTON: The United States and its nuclear allies rebuked Russia on Monday for “irresponsible and dangerous” talk about possibly deploying nuclear weapons, as a review of the keystone nuclear treaty opened at the United Nations. “Following Russia’s unprovoked and unlawful war of aggression against Ukraine, we call on Russia to cease its irresponsible and dangerous nuclear rhetoric and behavior, to …