International

HAVANA: A deadly explosion hit a well-known hotel in downtown Havana on Friday, tearing a gash several floors high in the side of the building, killing at least 22 people and injuring upwards of 70, witnesses and state media said. Speaking from the scene on Cuban television, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the blast at the historic, high-end Hotel Saratoga appeared …

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was booed and heckled on Sunday on his first public outing since protests erupted across the country demanding his ruling family resign over the worsening economic crisis. Months of blackouts and acute shortages of food, fuel and medicines have caused widespread suffering across the South Asian island, which is enduring its worst-ever economic downturn. …

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz was admitted to hospital on Saturday in the Red Sea city of Jeddah to undergo medical tests, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported on Sunday, citing a statement from the royal court. He is undergoing the tests in the King Faisal Specialist Hospital, the statement said, giving no other details. “May God preserve the Custodian of …

As many as 60 people were feared to have been killed in the Russian bombing of a village school in the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk, the regional governor said on Sunday. Governor Serhiy Gaidai said Russian forces dropped a bomb on Saturday afternoon on the school in Bilohorivka where about 90 people were sheltering, causing a fire that engulfed …

Uttar Pradesh (UP) Board of Madrassa Education chairperson Iftikhar Ahmad Javed has backed the idea of bringing in a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in India, stating that it is being opposed only by those who want to keep Muslims oppressed, a report published in The Times of India said. Javed said the UCC should have been brought in right when India gained …

ZURICH: Lawmakers blocked a bid to overhaul strict Swiss banking secrecy rules on Friday in a blow to freedom of information advocates seeking an exemption for journalists and whistleblowers. Switzerland has been under fire over its press freedom rules after a law introduced in 2015 led a leading media group, Tamedia, to bow out from an international investigation into a …

KYIV: Local authorities in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol accused Russian forces on Friday of opening fire on a car on its way to evacuate civilians from a vast steel works, killing a fighter and violating a ceasefire agreement. Russia did not immediately comment on the Mariupol city council’s statement. Moscow has denied targeting civilians and had offered a ceasefire …

WASHINGTON / ISLAMABAD: Top-level contacts between Pakistan and the US recommenced on Friday as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari and invited him to a food security meeting at the UN headquarters in New York on May 18. The two-day ministerial conference will focus on the threat to global food security, triggered by the Russian invasion …

PARIS: The devastating heatwave that gripped India and Pakistan over the last two months is unprecedented, but worse — perhaps far worse — is on the horizon as climate change continues apace, top climate scientists said. Even without additional global warming South Asia is, statistically speaking, ripe for a “big one” in the same way that California is said to …

North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Saturday, South Korea’s military said, three days before the inauguration of South Korean President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who has vowed to take a hard line against the North. South Korean military said that North Korea fired what is believed to be an submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) into the sea off its east coast around …