19-09-2024 COLOMBO: “I thought I’d spend my whole life here, fighting a corrupt government but the younger generation did something.” Samadhi Paramitha Brahmananayake is looking at the field where she spent months camped out with thousands of other demonstrators in Sri Lanka’s capital in 2022. She can’t quite believe that …

19-09-2024 ROME: Intense storms battering central Europe are now reaching Italy, where warnings for heavy rain, strong winds and floods have been issued for much of the country. Floods are already reported in the central city of Pescara, while the Italian meteorological service’s weather alerts apply from the northern coast …

19-09-2024 LONDON/ NEW YORK: Instagram is overhauling the way it works for teenagers, promising more “built-in protections” for young people and added controls and reassurance for parents. The new “teen accounts” are being introduced from Tuesday in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. They will turn many privacy settings on …

19-09-2024 MOGADISHU: Somalia may be one of the poorest countries in the world and beset by violence, but it is “fixable”, according to its top climate official. The country has been torn apart by more than 30 years of overlapping conflicts including an Islamist insurgency, a civil war, and a …

18-09-2024 BEIRUT: Nine people, including a child, have been killed after handheld pagers used by members of the armed group Hezbollah to communicate exploded across Lebanon, the country’s health minister says. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among 2,800 other people who were wounded by the simultaneous blasts in Beirut and …

18-09-2024 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI/ TEHRAN: India has condemned comments made by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on the treatment of Muslims in the South Asian nation, calling his remarks “misinformed and unacceptable”. “We cannot consider ourselves to be Muslims if we are oblivious to the suffering that …

18-09-2024 HARARE: Zimbabwe plans to cull 200 elephants to feed communities facing acute hunger after the worst drought in four decades, wildlife authorities said on Tuesday. The El Nino-induced drought wiped out crops in southern Africa, impacting 68 million people and causing food shortages across the region. “We can confirm …

18-09-2024 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI/ MANIOUR: The Indian government is in talks seeking to resolve a long-running conflict between two ethnic communities in the northeastern state of Manipur, Interior Minister Amit Shah said at a press conference on Tuesday. Internet and mobile data services were restored in Manipur …

18-09-2024 LONDON: Malnutrition is the world’s worst child health crisis and climate change will only make things more severe, according to Microsoft-co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates. Between now and 2050, 40 million more children will have stunted growth and 28 million more will suffer from wasting, the most extreme and …

18-09-2024 SEATTLE: Boeing is freezing hiring and weighing temporary furloughs to cut costs as a strike by more than 30,000 workers entered its fourth day on Monday. The planemaker and union leadership badly misjudged anger among union members who backed a strike with 96% support last week, stopping production of …