BEIJING: US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday became the first Pentagon chief to visit China since 2014, starting a three-day trip with a goal of improving security dialogue with Beijing despite…
BOGOTA: Colombia will next week formally become NATO’s first Latin American “global partner,” President Juan Manuel Santos announced Friday. Santos, who won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end…
AUCKLAND: Pakistan has defeated New Zealand by 48 runs in the second Twenty20 against New Zealand at Auckland’s Eden Park on Thursday. The Kiwis never quite settled on the pitch as they lost…
PARIS: The first trial stemming from the November 2015 Paris terror attacks opens Wednesday when Jawad Bendaoud appears in court, charged with harbouring two of the jihadists in the aftermath of the…
WASHINGTON: US Senator Tammy Duckworth is pregnant with her second child and is on track to become the first US senator to give birth while in office, the Illinois Democrat told a…
WELLINGTON: New Zealand thrashed Pakistan by seven wickets in the first Twenty20 international in Wellington. Having been whitewashed 5-0 in the one-day international series, any hopes Pakistan would be more competitive in the…
JEDDAH: For years Areej al-Ghamdi could only cheer her favourite football team from home, but everything changed on Friday when Saudi Arabia allowed women into the stadium for the first time. The…
WASHINGTON: There is a slim chance of the first death-row Indian-American prisoner being executed on the scheduled date of February 23 because of a 2015 moratorium on the death penalty by Pennsylvania…
CHERNOBYL: At ground zero of Ukraine´s Chernobyl tragedy, workers in orange vests are busy erecting hundreds of dark-coloured panels as the country gets ready to launch its first solar plant to revive…
PARIS: In Mandarin, Emmanuel Macron’s name is rendered “Makelong”, or “the horse vanquishes the dragon” — an encouraging image for the French president as he heads to China on Sunday hoping to…
LIMA: Peru’s recently-pardoned former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori left a hospital as a free man for the first time in 12 years on Thursday, waving to his supporters from a wheelchair before…
Nepal’s parliament Wednesday elected communist lawmaker Bidhya Bhandari as the country’s first female president after the adoption of a landmark constitution last month. The former defence minister defeated her opponent Kul Bahadur…
Pope Francis will meet slum dwellers and refugees and call for dialogue between Christians and Muslims when he visits Kenya, Uganda and Central African Republic next month, the Vatican said on Saturday.…
Russian warplanes carried out air strikes in three Syrian provinces alongside regime aircraft on Wednesday, a Syrian security source told AFP. Syrian state television subsequently reported Russian strikes in two provinces, saying…
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Tuesday nominated a female judge to sit on the Afghanistan Supreme Court in an unprecedented move that has angered some Islamic conservatives. Anisa Rasouli, the head of…
Lieutenant Colonel Christine Mau, a US Air Force pilot who was part of the first all-female combat sortie over Afghanistan in 2011, this week became the first woman to fly the Lockheed…
The first Haj flight SV-727 is scheduled to leave for Jeddah, Saudi Arabia today, kicking off the month-long pre-Haj operation to airlift 28,072 intending pilgrims to the holy land for Haj-2014 from…
