International

21-03-2026 WASHINGTON: The top intelligence official in the US said on Wednesday that the Iranian regime was “intact” but “largely degraded”. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and other top Trump administration officials testified at a congressional hearing for more than two hours about worldwide threats to the US. It …

21-03-2026 NEW YORK: Music giant Sony Music says it has requested the removal of more than 135,000 songs by fraudsters impersonating its artists on streaming services. The so-called deepfakes were created using generative AI, and targeted some of the company’s biggest acts, who include Beyonce, Queen and Harry Styles The …

21-03-2026 BANGKOK: Thailand’s Anutin Charnvirakul sailed through a parliamentary vote on Thursday to become the first reelected prime minister in two decades, a ‌fresh mandate that could bring rare stability for the turbulent politics of the Southeast Asian nation. The Bhumjaithai Party’s Anutin led from the start in rout of …

21-03-2026 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: Foreign selling in Indian equities surged in the first half of March, led by financials, marking the heaviest fortnightly selling in 17 months and dragging the Nifty 50 to its worst fortnight since the COVID-19-led ‌rout in March 2020. Foreign portfolio investors’ offloaded stocks worth …

21-03-2026 BERLIN/ PARIS: For a self-described transatlanticist like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the language has been unusually blunt. When President Donald Trump asked countries to join a global effort against Iran and deploy ships to prize open the Strait of Hormuz, whose near closure has held the global economy in …

21-03-2026 JERUSALEM/ TEHRAN: Iran has ratcheted up the pressure on several Gulf nations by attacking their energy facilities in retaliation for an Israeli strike on its South Pars gasfield, as the war threatens to further ignite the entire region into an even more ominous phase, all-out conflagration. The dangerous new …

21-03-2026 MADRID: King Felipe of Spain appears to have helped thaw frosty relations with Mexico by acknowledging abuses carried out by his country during its conquest but in doing so he has reopened a fierce debate over the colonization of the New World. The arrival of Spaniards in America from …

20-03-2026 COLOMBO: Sri Lanka has declared every Wednesday a holiday for public institutions to conserve fuel as the island nation grapples with possible shortages in the wake of the US and Israel’s war with Iran. “We must prepare for the worst, but hope for the best,” President Anura Kumara Dissanayake …

20-03-2026 PHOENIX, ARIZONA: A significant and unusually early heatwave is building across the south-western US this week, bringing temperatures more typical of early summer than mid-March. In Phoenix, Arizona, the National Weather Service (NWS) forecasts temperatures could exceed 100F (38C) as soon as Wednesday, the earliest arrival of triple-digit heat …

20-03-2026 UNITED NATIONS/ BEIRUT: Israeli attacks on residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in Lebanon may amount to war crimes, the United Nations human rights office says as the Israeli military pummels its northern neighbor as part of the wider war engulfing the Middle East. At a news briefing on Tuesday …