KIEV, Ukraine: Ukraine's president said Sunday that intercepted radio and telephone conversations prove that Russia-backed separatists were responsible for firing the rockets that pounded the southeastern city of Mariupol and killed at least 30 people. The attack on Mariupol, a strategically situ

WASHINGTON: A pair of F-16 fighter jets escorted two US commercial airliners to their landing in Atlanta on Saturday following a bomb threat online, an aviation spokesman said. A threat posted to Twitter prompted the jets to be scrambled for the planes arriving from Portland and Milwaukee, said P

DONETSK: Pro-Russian rebels on Friday vowed to conquer more territory in eastern Ukraine and ruled out peace talks after Kiev retreated from a long-disputed airport, casting aside Europe's latest push for a truce. The defiant comments from Donetsk separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko came as

WASHINGTON: Beyond all the optics and symbolism of the US president being chief guest at India's Republic Day celebrations, President Obama is arriving in New Delhi with his eye on at least one big prize: A climate change deal, at least of the kind he has clinched with China. US officials who pre

KINGSTON: Jamaica's Cabinet has approved a much-anticipated bill of drug law amendments that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot and pave the way for a legal medical marijuana industry on the Caribbean island, the justice minister said Wednesday. Following the Cabinet's authori

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama called for higher taxes on wealthy Americans and new initiatives to boost the middle class as he urged Americans to turn the page on years of economic woes and hard-fought wars in his sixth State of the Union address before Congress. Some highlights from Obama's

BEIJING: China has snubbed Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida for his statement acknowledging Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman slammed Japan, asking it to mind its own business instead of interfering in India-China relationship. The Chinese reaction cam

DHAKA: The 17-day virtual house arrest of Bangladesh opposition leader Khaleda Zia was on Monday lifted unexpectedly by authorities here, amid renewed violence over last year's disputed polls that left at least 28 people dead. The additional police and barricade around the Bangladesh Nationalist

TAIPEI: A 32-year-old Taiwanese man has died after a three-day gaming binge at an internet cafe in the island's south, the second such case this year, a report said on Saturday. The man, identified by his family name Hsieh, was found slumped motionless in his chair in the cafe in Kaohsiung city.

BEIJING: Thirty-two officials in far-western China have been punished over alleged bribe-taking, nepotism or other wrongdoing in the choosing of people for over-subscribed Muslim pilgrimages to the holy city of Makkah, a Communist Party commission and a state newspaper said. China’s Uighur Muslim

ANKARA: Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal on Saturday praised Turkey as a “source of power” for all Muslims in gratitude to Turkey’s leaders for supporting the Palestinian cause. “A democratic, stable and developed Turkey is a source of power for all Muslims,” Mashaal said in an address to the ruling Just

CAIRO: An Egyptian appeals court reduced the jail terms on Sunday for 23 young activists convicted of violating a law banning protests without a permit, judicial sources said. The arrest of the activists in June while they demonstrated against the law which tightly restricts protests was condemne

SURABAYA, INDONESIA:  The mystery of Indonesia's missing airliner was partly solved on Tuesday, when rescue teams retrieved and tallied a grim inventory of bodies and debris from the plane off the coast of southwestern Borneo. But it remained unknown what caused the plane, AirAsia Flight 8501, to

JAKARTA:  After a second day of searching without any confirmed sighting of wreckage, the Indonesian authorities on Monday sought to lower expectations about finding survivors from a missing AirAsia jet carrying 162 people. "We realize that we have to be prepared for the worst," Jusuf Kalla, Indo

JAKARTA: An astonishingly tragic year for air travel in Southeast Asia turned worse Sunday when an AirAsia plane carrying 162 people disappeared over stormy Indonesian waters, with no word on its fate despite several hours of searching by air and sea. AirAsia Flight 8501 vanished in airspace poss

TEHRAN: Iran’s army said Saturday it has deployed a suicide drone for the first time in massive ongoing military drills near the strategic Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the Arabian Gulf. Gen. Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the army’s chief commander of ground forces, described the unmanned aircraft

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia: Tearful memorials were being held on Friday across tsunami-hit nations for the 220,000 people who perished when giant waves decimated coastal areas of the Indian Ocean a decade ago. On December 26, 2004 a 9.3-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's western tip generated a series

JERUSALEM: Israeli authorities gave final approval on Wednesday to the construction of 380 new settler homes in two areas of annexed east Jerusalem, a local official said. Yosef Pepe Alalu, a Jerusalem city councillor with the opposition Meretz party, said local officials were taking advantage of