International

13-02-2025 JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatens to resume “intense fighting” in Gaza if Hamas fails to release captives held there by noon on Saturday. US President Donald Trump tells reporters “we’re going to take” Gaza and urges Jordan’s King Abdullah to allocate land for forcibly displaced Palestinians. Abdullah …

13-02-2025 ROME:  launched a series of raids targeting Mafia clans operating in and around the Sicilian capital Palermo. More than 1,200 officers were involved in the operation, which the military Carabinieri force said was aimed at “dismantling” the area’s Mafia. The raids, the biggest for several years, were seen as …

13-02-2025 BEIJING: Public anger in China over concerns raised by doctors that generic drugs used in public hospitals are increasingly ineffective has led to a rare response from the government. Doctors say they believe the country’s drug procurement system, which incentivizes the use of cheap generic drugs over original brand-name …

12-02-2025 BEIJING/ WASHINGTON/ After US President Donald Trump’s administration froze donations in January to Cambodia’s largest demining organization, which works to clear the countryside of deadly remnants of Washington’s past wars in Southeast Asia, the group announced new funding from China. Beijing has doubled its contributions over the past three …

12-02-2025 STOCKHOLM/ OREBRO: Government offices, schools and workplaces fell silent in Sweden at midday on Tuesday in remembrance of the victims of a mass shooting at an adult education centre last week when a gunman killed 10 people before turning his weapon on himself. Swedes, grown reluctantly accustomed to gangland …

12-02-2025 BERLIN: Germany’s trade surplus with the United States reached a record level, data from the statistics office showed, as countries wait to learn how US President Donald Trump will impose tariffs on imported goods. Germany’s trade surplus with the US expanded to 70 billion euros ($72 billion) in 2024, …

12-02-2025 PARIS: Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered the inaugural address of the AI Action Summit in Paris. French President Emmanuel Macron, EU Commission president Urusula Von Der Leyen, and UN chief Antonio Guterres were also present. In his address, PM Modi called for investment in skilling and reskilling people for …

12-02-2025 ADDIS ABABA/ KHARTOUM: The civil war in Sudan has created the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”, the African Union has warned. The conflict between the Sudanese military government and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is hampering the delivery of aid to a population suffering attacks and the threat …

12-02-2025 PORT LOUIS: Slam poet Geraldine Baptiste pulls no punches when telling the story of her “Granpapa”, one of the 1,500-plus people ripped from a peaceful existence on the Chagos Islands by the British to make way for a United States military base, most shipped “kouma zanimo” (meaning “like animals” …

12-02-2025 WASHINGTON: When a prominent Saudi Trans woman posted her suicide note on X, her friends and followers were devastated. The note, viewed by millions, said a lawyer in the US where she had been trying to claim asylum had persuaded her into returning home to a family and country …