International

03-04-2023 EQUATOR/ CAPE PALMAS/ Pirates have abandoned a Danish-owned ship hijacked in the Gulf of Guinea last week but have taken some crew members with them while others have been brought to safety, the vessel’s owner says. The Liberian-flagged oil and chemicals tanker Monjasa Reformer was boarded on Saturday by …

03-04-2023 ARKANSAS: More than half a million homes and businesses were without power as of midday on Saturday after storms and tornadoes swept across the US South and Midwest leaving a trail of destruction. Ohio was one of the worst-hit states with about 200,000 people without power, according to PowerOutage.us. …

03-04-2023 WASHINGTON: The president of the World Bank has told media that he is concerned about some of the loans China has been making to developing economies in Africa. David Malpass says the terms and conditions need to be “more transparent”. It comes amid worries that countries including Ghana and …

03-04-2023 TOKYO: Scientists have filmed a fish swimming at an extraordinary depth in the ocean, making it the deepest observation of this nature that has ever been made. The species – a type of snailfish of the genus Pseudoliparis was filmed swimming at 8,336m (27,349ft). It was filmed by an …

03-04-2023 JERUSALEM: Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have protested in Tel Aviv for the 13th straight week against a controversial judicial overhaul that has now been suspended by the government while talks are held with party representatives. Carrying Israeli flags on Saturday, people marched through the centre of Israel’s commercial …

03-04-2023 HELSINKI: Voters in Finland are casting their ballots to elect members of a new parliament in what opinion polls suggest will be a tough competition for Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Social Democrats Party (SDP) to keep its post. More than 2,400 candidates from 22 parties are vying for the …

03-04-2023 MEXICO CITY: A new report has identified failures in an investigation into the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Mexico, one of the most high-profile mass kidnappings in recent history. The Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), a panel of experts appointed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, …

03-04-2023 BOGOTA: Farmers in parts of Colombia say sales of coca, the raw ingredient used to make cocaine, have collapsed after a recent surge in production of the illicit drug. “We’ve seen a complete collapse of buyers,” said Andres Rojas, a coca farmer in the Catatumbo region who advocates for …

03-04-2023 VIRGINIA: In a highly unusual ruling, a state court judge in Virginia has voided a United States Marine’s adoption of an Afghan war orphan more than a year after he took the three-year-old girl away from the Afghan couple raising her but the girl’s future remains uncertain. For now, …

03-04-2023 DAMASCUS/ JERUSLEM: Israel has launched air raids on outposts in Syria’s Homs province, wounding at least five soldiers, according to the Syrian defence ministry. The raids early on Sunday were the third in recent days and came only a day after another attack on Friday that killed two Iranian …