International

22-06-2026 SYDNEY: Bird flu has killed thousands of southern elephant seal pups on remote Antarctic islands belonging to Australia, new research has shown. Heard and McDonald Islands, about 4,000 km (2,485 miles) south-west of Australia, are home to over one million breeding seabirds and seals. Scientists, using data from last …

22-06-2026 WASHINGTON: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has severely criticised some of America’s Nato allies, while announcing a six-month review of the presence of US forces in Europe. “It’s a review that some countries will fail, and others will pass with flying colours”, he said at a meeting of Nato …

22-06-2026 ABUJA: Thirty-five people have been killed after gunmen struck Niger’s largest airport on Thursday, officials say; the second attack in less than five months. Residents in the predominately Muslim country told media they had just finished their morning prayers when explosions and gunshot sounds rang out from Diori Hamani …

22-06-2026 TEHRAN: The US has dropped its naval blockade of Iran after the two countries signed a deal to end the war in the Middle East. US Central Command confirmed the end of the blockade on social media “in accordance with the President’s direction” and said some US vessels would …

21-06-2026 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: The prices of Apple products will have to increase due to the new demand for memory chips from the artificial intelligence boom, outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook has told The Wall Street Journal. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” he told the newspaper on Wednesday, adding that …

21-06-2026 DUBAI: Oil prices have dropped following the United States and Iran’s signing of an interim peace agreement, resuming a slide interrupted by US President Donald Trump’s warning that he could restart his military campaign. Brent crude fell 2.3 percent today in Asia, returning the international benchmark to near to …

21-06-2026 TEHRAN/ WASHINGTON: The US-Iran memorandum of understanding announced on Wednesday amounts to a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and a deal to try to reach a final agreement on almost everything else. President Donald Trump framed it as a major win for the US in a lengthy press …

21-06-2026 JERUSALEM: “The whole land of Israel was promised to the children of God… and this is where we are going to build a new Temple for the entire humanity to come and pray together.” Those were the potentially incendiary words of Moshe Feiglin, a right-wing nationalist Israeli politician, who …

21-06-2026 MOSCOW: Moscow has come under the largest Ukrainian attack since the start of the full-scale war, with close to 200 drones hitting targets around the Russian capital and setting columns of thick smoke billowing high into the sky. Seventeen people were wounded in the Moscow region, according to local …

21-06-2026 QUITO: An Ecuadorean man, who police accuse of leading a faction of one of the country’s most feared criminal gangs, has been shot dead as he was leaving the airport in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil. Security footage shows two young men waiting outside the arrivals terminal holding stuffed toys …