International

19-03-2026 LONDON/ NEW YORK: Ties between the US tech giant Palantir and the United Kingdom government are coming under increased scrutiny following the arrest of former UK ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson over his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Palantir, which was a client of …

18-03-2026 TEHRAN: Israel’s killing of Ali Larijani, the powerful secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, will not deal a fatal blow to Iran’s leadership, the country’s foreign minister said. In an interview, aired after the killing of Larijani was confirmed by Tehran early on Wednesday, Iranian Minister of Foreign …

18-03-2026 PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: US President Donald Trump threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub Kharg Island and said he was not ready for a deal with Tehran to end the war which has shut off the vital Strait of Hormuz and caused chaos in global energy markets. …

18-03-2026 BEIRUT/ SIDON: Hussain Murtada and his family are camping in the back of a small truck, a flimsy tarpaulin shielding them from a storm on Sunday, with no room left at shelters for displaced people in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. “We are putting tarp ‌over it because …

18-03-2026 PARIS: French anti-terror prosecutors have opened an investigation into two brothers suspected of plotting a “lethal and anti-Semitic” attack. They say the men described as Moroccan-Italian nationals aged 20 and 22 were picked up last week in a car in northern France. Officers found a loaded semi-automatic weapon, a …

18-03-2026 KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused European allies of seeking to “blackmail” Kyiv into reopening a pipeline transporting Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. He said restoring the flow of Russian crude oil through Ukraine into the European Union (EU) would be like lifting economic sanctions on Moscow. …

18-03-2026 GAZA STRIP/ RAMALLAHL: Israeli forces killed 16 Palestinians in the ​Gaza Strip and the West Bank, health officials said, in one of the heaviest death tolls in a single day ‌in weeks, as Israel continued to launch attacks on Lebanon and Iran. Medics and the interior ministry of the …

18-03-2026 Bureau Report NEW DELHI: India has sought safe passage for 22 of its vessels stranded west of the Strait of Hormuz, a foreign ‌affairs ministry spokesperson said on Saturday, after Iran allowed a few Indian ships to sail through, in a rare exception to the blockade. Randhir Jaiswal told …

18-03-2026 DAMASCUS: Syrians across the country marked the 15th anniversary of the peaceful protests that launched their uprising against Bashar al-Assad, an Arab Spring-inspired revolt that ultimately ended more than five decades of family rule after a lightning offensive toppled the president in late 2024. The uprising’s long arc reached …

17-03-2026 GAZA STRIP: With the eyes of the world on the United States and Israel’s war in Iran, Israeli strikes and raids in Gaza and settler attacks and military operations in the occupied West Bank have continued unabated. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 72,000 people in …