Top Olympic sponsor Toyota pulls Games-related TV ads

Toyota won’t be airing any Olympic-themed advertisements on Japanese television during the Tokyo Games despite being one of the IOC’s top corporate sponsors.
19 July 2021, 10:31 AM

Monsoon Rains: 23 killed in wall collapse, landslide in Mumbai

At least 23 people were killed after several homes were crushed by a collapsed wall and a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rains in India’s financial capital Mumbai, authorities said yesterday.
18 July 2021, 18:00 PM

Armenian court rejects challenge to PM’s re-election

Armenia’s top court on Saturday threw out a challenge by opposition parties to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s victory in snap parliamentary polls last month.
18 July 2021, 18:00 PM

Japan landslide toll rises to 15

The death toll in a landslide that hit the Japanese resort town of Atami has risen to 15, a local official said yesterday, as hundreds of rescuers continued the search for over a dozen missing residents.
18 July 2021, 18:00 PM

China denies any politics behind Unesco move

A top Chinese official said yesterday that political tensions between Beijing and Australia were not behind a Unesco recommendation to place the Great Barrier Reef on its endangered list.
18 July 2021, 18:00 PM

‘Strenuously favours political settlement’

The Taliban’s supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada yesterday said he “strenuously favours” a political settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan even as the hardline Islamist movement has launched a sweeping offensive across the nation.
18 July 2021, 18:00 PM

Nepal's new PM wins confidence vote amid coronavirus crisis

Nepal's new Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba won a vote of confidence in parliament on Sunday, days after the Supreme Court reinstated the legislature that was dissolved in May.
18 July 2021, 17:57 PM

Afghanistan withdraws ambassador, diplomats from Islamabad

Afghanistan has withdrawn its ambassador and diplomats from Pakistan's capital following the kidnapping of the ambassador's daughter, the Afghan foreign ministry said on Sunday, a new blow to relations at a sensitive time for the Afghan peace process.
18 July 2021, 17:21 PM

Turkey criticizes European court’s ruling on headscarf ban

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman on Sunday condemned a European Union court decision to allow employers to ban staff wearing Muslim headscarves as appeasing Islamophobia.
18 July 2021, 13:29 PM

US, five Central Asian states vow not to allow forced takeover in Afghanistan

There’s no support in the region for “the imposition by force” of a new government in Afghanistan, says a joint statement signed by the United States and its five Central Asian allies.
18 July 2021, 06:44 AM

Officials now say no ban on animal sacrifice in Kashmir

Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Friday said there is no ban on the sacrifice of animals during the upcoming Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday, a day after the government asked law enforcers to stop the sacrifice of cows, calves, camels and other animals.
18 July 2021, 06:26 AM

Congress MP writes to Modi for probing nationality of union minister Nisith Pramanik

An Indian lawmaker of the main opposition Congress has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to probe allegations that Minister of State for Home in the federal government Nisith Pramanik, from West Bengal, is a Bangladeshi national.
18 July 2021, 05:33 AM

Magnitude 5.4 earthquake strikes southern Philippines

An earthquake of magnitude 5.4 struck the southern Philippine province of Davao Oriental early on Sunday, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
18 July 2021, 03:47 AM

Thailand plans more curbs as Covid deaths hit record

Thailand is looking to introduce more restrictions on movement as authorities yesterday reported record numbers of new cases and deaths, despite partial
17 July 2021, 18:00 PM

Rivals meet in Doha

Representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban met in Doha for talks yesterday, AFP correspondents said, as violence rages in the country with foreign forces almost entirely withdrawn. 
17 July 2021, 18:00 PM

Move to omit Rabindranath's work in UP: BJP trying to 'saffronize' education, says West Bengal minister

West Bengal Education Minister Bratya Basu has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of trying to "saffronize” the school education after the Uttar Pradesh government's move to omit the works of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore and India’s legendary scholar Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan from the syllabus for class 10 and 12.
17 July 2021, 14:31 PM

Kabul, Taliban negotiators meet in Qatar as Afghan fighting rages

Representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban met in Doha for talks on Saturday, AFP correspondents said, as violence rages in the country with foreign forces almost entirely withdrawn.
17 July 2021, 13:41 PM

All gaps in India’s bordering fencing to be filled by 2022: Amit Shah

Indian Home Minister Amit Shah today said that all gaps in the country’s border fencing will be filled by next year to completely stop infiltration and other anti-national activities.
17 July 2021, 11:30 AM

Pulitzer Prize-winning journo killed in Afghanistan

Reuters journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed on Friday while covering a clash between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters near a border crossing with Pakistan, an Afghan commander said.   
16 July 2021, 18:00 PM

BioNTech produces 10 times more antibodies than Sinovac

People who received BioNTech’s coronavirus vaccine had ten times the amount of antibodies than those given China’s Sinovac, a Hong Kong study has shown, adding to growing data on different jabs’ effectiveness. 
16 July 2021, 18:00 PM