International

05-07-2024 LONDON: Britons were voting on Thursday in a parliamentary election that is expected to bring Keir Starmer’s Labour Party to power, sweeping away Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives after 14 often turbulent years. Opinion polls put Starmer’s centre-left party on course for a landslide victory but also suggest many …

05-07-2024 JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of starting a ceasefire in Gaza while Hamas remains in power, after The New York Times published an article citing six current and former security officials who said a truce would give Israeli troops time to prepare for a …

04-07-2024 TOKYO: Japan’s top court has ruled as unconstitutional a defunct eugenics law which saw 16,500 disabled people forcibly sterilized between the 1950s and 1990s. The Supreme Court also ordered the government to pay damages to 11 victims, who were involved in five cases that were heard on appeal. Wednesday’s …

04-07-2024 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI: A day after 121 people were crushed to death at a religious event in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, families of some of the victims are still searching for their loved ones. The incident took place during a satsang (a Hindu …

04-07-2024 QUEENSLAND: A purge of frozen sperm has been ordered in the Australian state of Queensland, after an audit by its health watchdog found almost half of fertility samples were at risk of misidentification. Such mix-ups can rob parents and donor children of key genetic information and medical records, and …

04-07-2024 ATHENS: Greece has introduced a six-day working week for certain industries in a bid to boost economic growth. New legislation, which came into effect at the start of July, allows employees to work up to 48 hours in a week as opposed to 40. It only applies to businesses …

04-07-2024 WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden has blamed his poor debate performance last week on jet lag, telling reporters that he “wasn’t very smart” for “travelling around the world a couple of times” before the debate. “I didn’t listen to my staff… and then I nearly fell asleep on stage,” he …

04-07-2024 GAZA CITY/ KHAN YOUNIS: Tens of thousands of Palestinians are seeking shelter and a safe location, as the exodus from Gaza’s second city of Khan Younis continues in response to Israeli military evacuation orders. The UN estimates that 250,000 people in eastern parts of the city are affected by …

04-07-2024 KINGSTON, JAMAICA: Having survived the night as Hurricane Beryl tore across her idyllic home of Union Island with ferocious force, Katrina Coy was taken aback by the extent of the devastation which lay before her. Virtually every building on the island, which lies off St Vincent and the Grenadines, …

03-07-2024 MIAMI, FLORIDA: Hurricane Beryl has intensified into a “potentially catastrophic” Category 5 storm, the United States’s National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, as it headed towards Jamaica after bringing down power lines, damaging houses and flooding streets on other southeastern Caribbean islands. Beryl, the earliest Category 4 storm ever reported, …