19-02-2021 ALGIERS/ PARIS: An Algerian court has sentenced a man to death over the kidnap and murder of a French mountaineer in 2014. Hervé Gourdel, 55, was abducted while exploring Djurdjura National Park in a case that sparked outrage. A graphic beheading video later emerged of his death with the …

19-02-2021 HOUSTON. NEW YORK: About 7 million people in Texas, a quarter of the United States’ second-most populous state have been told to boil their water or stop using it entirely as homeowners, hospitals, and businesses grappled with broken water mains, burst pipes and power outages. Winter storms during the …

19-02-2021 WASHINGTON: NASA’s science rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology laboratory ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely on the floor of a vast crater, its first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. Mission …

18-02-2021 Bureau Report + Agencies WELLINGTON/ MELBOURNE: All schools in New Zealand will offer free period products from June, as part of efforts to stamp out period poverty. Authorities are concerned that some female students are skipping classes because they cannot afford products such as tampons and sanitary pads. The …

18-02-2021 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report NEW DELHI: India’s former home minister who was accused of sexual harassment by a journalist has lost a criminal defamation case he had filed against her after a court in Delhi ruled that his libel claims were unproven. As the #MeToo movement globally …

18-02-2021 Bureau Report MENLO PARK (CALIFORNIA)/ MELBOURNE: Facebook has blocked Australian users of its platform from reading and sharing local and international news, stepping up its campaign against government plans to force technology giants to pay publishers for their news content. “The proposed law fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our …

17-02-2021 TEHRAN/ WASHINGTON/ UNITED NATIONS: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran will only accept and react to positive action by other parties to its 2015 nuclear deal as it has seen promises broken before. Khamenei said during a televised speech on Wednesday that Iran has heard a lot of …

17-02-2021 YANGON/ RANGOON (MYANMAR): Thousands of people took to the streets of Yangon on Wednesday to show their anger at the military coup in Myanmar amid rising concern of violence in the troubled Southeast Asian nation. Protesters called for massive rallies to shatter the army’s claim that people backed its …

17-02-2021 NEW YORK: Dozens people have died and massive power outages have disrupted life in the US amid killer tornadoes in the Southeast and historic sub-zero temperatures as far south as Texas. The severe weather also led to the cancellation of COVID-19 inoculations, and continues to pose a threat to …

17-02-2021 UNITED NATIONS/ WASHINGTON/ SANA’A: The United Nations’ humanitarian chief has said he is “very alarmed” by a Houthi rebel advance on the Yemeni government’s last northern stronghold. Mark Lowcock, the UN undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, tweeted on Tuesday that an assault on Marib would endanger two million civilians and …