A powerful typhoon is battering the northern Philippines, with at least one person dead, several missing and thousands forced to flee their homes. Typhoon Koppu made landfall near the town of Casiguran on the island of Luzon on Sunday morning, bringing winds of close to 200km/h (124mph). The v

BAGHDAD: Iraqi forces and the Shia militias fighting alongside them announced on Friday that they had retaken the oil refinery at Beiji from Islamic State militants, in some of the first significant progress against the extremist group after months of stalled efforts. "Beiji refinery has been com

NEW YORK: A 6-month-old girl died on Thursday after being thrown out of the window of a New York City apartment building, the third such tragedy in three months, police said. Her mother was in custody, Police responding to a 911 call at about 2 p.m. found the baby unconscious and unresponsive lying

The United Nations refugee agency has been forced to step in to save scores of "orphan" children from detention in filthy police cells on the Greek island of Kos after its complaints at the squalid conditions went unheeded. Children as young as 11 who arrived by boat from Turkey without their par

NEW DELHI: India, Japan and the United States will hold joint naval exercises each year, Indian government sources said on Monday, as the three countries kicked off the first such drills in the Bay of Bengal in eight years, a move likely to concern China. The last time New Delhi hosted multilateral

JAKARTA: International help to assist Indonesia in combatting forest and agricultural fires cloaking Southeast Asia in haze has begun to arrive on Sumatra island, an official said on Saturday. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for Indonesia's disaster mitigation agency, said a Bombardier amphibio

KATHMANDU: Nepal has issued a notice seeking suppliers to bring in fuel by air or by any other means to ease the situation ahead of the biggest festival celebrated in the Himalayan nation. The notice published by the state-run Nepal Oil Corp has asked suppliers to submit proposals to supply gasol

HONG KONG: A rare drawing of comic book hero Tintin by Belgian cartoonist Herge fetched over $1 million at auction in Hong Kong Monday as experts say comic art is becoming as collectible as paintings. The artwork is an illustration from the cartoonist's "The Blue Lotus" book, published in 1936, w

MOSCOW: Russian volunteers who have honed their combat skills in Ukraine are likely to travel to Syria to fight alongside the forces of president Bashar al-Assad, Admiral Vladimir Komoyedov, the head of the Russian parliament's defence committee, said on Monday. "It is likely that groups of Russi

ISLAMABAD: Mark Seigel, American journalist and a key witness in the murder case of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, has recorded his statement before a Pakistan anti-terrorism court through video link that general Pervez Musharraf had warned that her safety would depend on the state o

ATLANTA: The U.S. state of Georgia executed its only woman on death row on Wednesday, marking the first time in 70 years the state has carried out a death sentence on a woman, a prison official said. Kelly Gissendaner, 47, died by lethal injection at 12:21 a.m. EDT at Georgia Diagnostic and Classif

NEW YORK/JEDDAH: Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir has accused Iran of fomenting regional strife by supporting terrorist groups. Responding to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s address at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly, the Saudi minister said the Iranian president should be the last

BEIJING: A typhoon struck mainland China on Tuesday after lashing Taiwan, where it killed two, injured hundreds and left hundreds of thousands without power or water. Typhoon Dujuan passed through Taiwan for three hours on Monday night, bringing high winds and rain. More than 100 flights in China

US President Barack Obama has said defeating Islamic State in Syria would only be possible if President Bashar al-Assad stepped down, and that the fight against the group will take time. He pledged to use all possible tools - military, intelligence and economic - to defeat IS, but acknowledged th

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has used a speech at the UN to call for an investigation into Thursday's stampede at the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. The incident is the deadliest to hit the Hajj in 25 years, with 769 people dead, more than 130 of them from Iran. Saudi Arabia's Foreign Min

KIEV, Ukraine: Ukraine's prime minister says Russian airlines will be banned from flying into the country, the latest attempt to put pressure on Russia as the conflict in eastern Ukraine grinds on. Ukraine also will ban Russian planes from using Ukrainian airspace for transit flights if the plane

BERLIN: As Middle Eastern migrants flocked to Germany, Google said Friday demand for its Arabic-German translation service had surged five-fold, urging native speakers to help improve the service. The EU’s top economy this year expects to take in between 800,000 and one million asylum-seekers, ma

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday opened one of the biggest mosques in Europe, warning against the lure of militants as the government frets over its citizens fighting for the Daesh group. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas wer