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A major fire that engulfed a restaurant and hotel in eastern India on Thursday killed at least six people and injured 20, a local fire officer said. The fire began when a cooking gas cylinder exploded while diners were eating in the restaurant, and it soon spread into an adjacent
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Asia was the world’s most disaster-hit region from climate and weather hazards in 2023, the United Nations said Tuesday, with floods and storms the chief cause of casualties and economic losses. Global temperatures hit record highs last year, and the UN’s weather and climate agency said Asia was
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The abrupt resignation of the United Nations special envoy for Libya, Abdoulaye Bathily, is the latest sign of the failure of reconciliation efforts in the war-torn North African country, analysts told AFP. The Senegalese diplomat, who on Tuesday tendered his resignation after only 18 months at the helm of the
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Taiwan will work with the United States to “safeguard peace and freedom” in the region, the island’s premier said on Monday, after Washington approved billions in military aid for Taipei in the face of an increasingly assertive China. The US House of Representatives on Saturday passed four bills in
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Suspected extremists in central Mali are holding more than 110 civilians whom they abducted six days ago, local sources told AFP on Monday. Three buses carrying the civilians were stopped on April 16 by “jihadists,” who forced the vehicles and the passengers to head toward a forest between Bandiagara and
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The World Health Organization voiced alarm Thursday at the growing spread of H5N1 bird flu to new species, including humans, who face an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate. “This remains I think an enormous concern,” the UN health agency’s chief scientist Jeremy Farrar told reporters in Geneva. The current bird
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The UK’s House of Lords rejected the government’s plan to send migrants to Rwanda for asylum processing in a vote on Wednesday after it approved two amendments to the legislation. The upper chamber of Parliament voted in favor of a proposal to exempt Afghans who worked with UK
Journalism
An Algerian journalist was expelled from the country after flying in from France and not being allowed to leave the airport as journalists continue to face challenges reporting in Algeria. Farid Alilat, a writer for the French-language magazine Jeune Afrique, wrote on Facebook that he spent 11 hours in police
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The father of a boy accused of stabbing two Christian clerics in Australia saw no signs of his son’s extremism, a Muslim community leader said on Wednesday as police prepared to file charges against rioters who besieged a Sydney church demanding revenge. The 16-year-old boy spoke in Arabic about
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India begins voting Friday in a six-week election, with Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s victory all but assured, raising concerns for the health of the world’s largest democracy. Modi remains roundly popular after a decade in office that has seen India rise in diplomatic clout and economic
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Public schools across the UAE have approved remote learning for their students on April 16 and 17 due to expected heavy rainfall, the government's media office announced on Monday. “Due to the current weather conditions, the Emirates Schools Establishment decided to adopt the remote education system for all
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An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 struck Tibet in western China on Saturday, the German Research Center for Geosciences (GFZ) said. The quake was at a depth of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), said GFZ, which initially recorded the magnitude at 5.7. China, which seized control of Tibet in
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Forty-three people remained stranded in mid-air Saturday, hours after a pylon supporting cable cars collapsed outside the southern Turkish resort city of Antalya killing one person, rescue services said. Ten people were injured in the accident, which happened late Friday afternoon, after one cable car in the Sarisu-Tunektepe system plummeted
Middle East
Lebanese security forces have arrested seven Syrians on suspicion of involvement in the murder of a local politician, a judicial official said Tuesday, amid a backlash against Syrian refugees. Pascal Sleiman was the coordinator in the Byblos (Jbeil) area, north of Beirut, for the Lebanese Forces (LF), a Christian party
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Two key US lawmakers said on Sunday they struck a deal on draft bipartisan data privacy legislation that would restrict consumer data that technology companies can collect and give Americans the power to prevent selling of personal information or compel its deletion. The agreement between Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, who
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Five people were killed and dozens injured after a fire broke out in an apartment building in Sharjah on Thursday night. The deaths were caused due to smoke inhalation, the UAE city’s police said in a statement on Friday. A 39-story residential building in Al-Nahda was engulfed in flames,