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11-06-2020 JERUSALEM/ GAZA/ BERUIT: Hamas members in the Gaza Strip have elected Yahya Sinwar to head its Gaza political bureau to succeed outgoing leader Ismail Haniya. Sinwar will take over from Haniya, who served out his two-term limit sometime in April. Sinwar was jailed by Israel in 1988 and spent the …

11-06-2020 US President Donald Trump says he will “not even consider” renaming military bases named for Confederate generals. He tweeted that the facilities were part of “a Great American heritage”. Trump’s remarks follow reports that top military officials were open to changes amid nationwide soul-searching after the death of George …

10-06-2020 SAINT PAUL/ WASHINGTON/ NEW YORK: The funeral of George Floyd, an African American whose death in police custody spawned global outrage, has heard impassioned pleas for racial justice. Speakers in the church in Houston, Texas, lined up to remember a man whose “crime was that he was born black”. …

10-06-2020 By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report + Agencies BAGHDAD/ TEHRAN: Fighters from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), known as Hashd al-Sha’abi, destroyed a headquarters believed to belong to the new ringleader of the Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) terror group in the Arab country. The recent operations that almost ended the …

10-06-2020 Bureau Report CANBERRA/ SYDNEY: Travellers should be free to cross all state borders from July under a new push by Prime Minister Scott Morrison to remove barriers he blames for costing jobs and putting tourism at risk. As tourism operators pleaded for certainty so families could book winter holidays, …

By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report + Agencies SAINT PAUL/ WASHINGTON/ NEW YORK: The Minneapolis city council has said it wants to disband the city’s police department, after days of protests over the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died after a city police officer knelt on his neck …

09-06-2020 KUALA LUMPUR/ DHAKA: Malaysia has detained nearly 270 Rohingya refugees whose boat had drifted offshore for nearly two months because of coronavirus lockdowns. They fled southern Bangladesh in early April but had been unable to dock. Dozens of those aboard jumped into the sea and tried to swim to …

09-06-2020 By SJA Jafri + Agencies KATHMANDU/ NEW DELHI: Nepal’s foreign minister says his country was still waiting for a response from India on holding talks to resolve a border dispute that has strained relations between the South Asian neighbours. Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali told The Associated Press in an …

09-06-2020 WASHINGTON/ SAINT PAUL: Democratic US presidential candidate Joe Biden has said the late George Floyd will “change the world.” Following a private meeting with Floyd’s family in Houston to offer his sympathies, Biden told CBS news his death was “one of the great inflection points in American history”. The …

09-06-2020 SAINT PAUL: The Minneapolis ex-policeman accused of killing unarmed black man George Floyd has made his first court appearance, where his bail was set at $1.25m (£1m). Prosecutors cited the “severity of the charges” and public outrage as the reason for upping his bail from $1m. Derek Chauvin faces charges …