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31-03-2026 MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: The Bank of America has agreed to pay $US72.5 million ($105.3 million) to settle a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records show. Lawyers for the bank and the women had told Manhattan-based US …

31-03-2026 CANBERRA: Few people are willing to guess how the Iran war might end, but Australia’s role in what happens next is becoming a little clearer. As the world struggles to manage an oil crisis, and diesel bowsers in parts of Australia run dry, leaders across the globe are urging …

31-03-2026 KUALA LUMPUR: Iran has allowed Malaysian ships to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, Malaysia’s leader said, amid the global energy crunch driven by the United States and Israel’s war with Tehran. In a televised address on Thursday, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim expressed thanks to Iran’s President Masoud …

31-03-2026 TEHRAN: Heavily armed state forces continue to control Iran’s streets, despite the United States and Israel launching more strikes and preparing for a potential ground attack, as the nearly one-month war proceeds with no clear end point on the horizon Checkpoints, roadblocks and patrols, some manned by masked forces …

31-03-2026 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI/ NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump had a productive conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the White House said on March 28, referring to the talks between the two leaders. The New York Times reported that billionaire businessman Elon Musk joined the phone …

31-03-2026 NEW YORK: The United Nations General Assembly this week overwhelmingly backed a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity”. Welcoming the vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the wealth of many Western nations was “built on stolen lives and stolen labor”. Noting the “barbaric …

30-03-2026 By SJA Jafri ISLAMABAD: In the middle of 1971, at the height of the Cold War, a Pakistani government plane carrying US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger flew overnight from Islamabad to Beijing. The trip was secret, the facilitator was Pakistan and the geopolitical consequences were generational. More than …

30-03-2026 BEIRUT: War between Israel and Hezbollah is pushing Lebanon’s fragile state and society towards breaking point, straining sectarian and political fault-lines as Shi’ite Muslims are displaced and enmity deepens between the Iran-backed group and its opponents. Of all Lebanon’s many crises since a 1975-90 civil ​war, the renewed conflict …

30-03-2026 Bureau Report + Agencies NEW DELHI: As India’s diplomats negotiated an accord that would ease punitive US tariffs on the South Asian country’s exports in January, New Delhi slashed its purchases of Russian crude oil in a move that was widely seen as a painful concession to President Donald …

30-03-2026 PARIS: A court in Paris has sentenced prominent Islam scholar Tariq Ramadan to 18 years in jail for raping three women, two years after he was given a jail term for a separate rape offence in Switzerland. The French rape case unfolded in 2017, when two of the three …