DHAKA: Malaysia’s prime minister has defended a proposal to bring back detention without trials.Speaking during an overseas trip, prime minister Najib Razak said the amendment was aimed at fighting organised crime and would not be abused to squelch political challenges.‘We will make

DHAKA: Australia’s new prime minister Tony Abbott begins a visit to Indonesia on Monday for talks on his tough refugee policies that have sparked anger in Jakarta, as his government also faced criticism over a deadly asylum boat accident.Abbott will meet president Susilo Bambang

DHAKA: Tens of thousands of people were being evacuated from high-risk areas in central Vietnam on Monday as a typhoon that sank at least two Chinese fishing ships neared the coast.A total of 75 fishermen are missing after three vessels encountered strong winds near the Paracel Islands,

DHAKA: In a body blow to RJD before next year`s Lok Sabha polls, its president Lalu Prasad was on Monday convicted by a special CBI court here in the fodder scam corruption case. The conviction disqualifies him from Parliament and renders him ineligible for contesting elections for at

DHAKA: A series of car bomb blasts in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has killed at least 36 people and injured more than 100, officials say.Police say the blasts targeted markets and car parks in mainly Shia Muslim districts of the city.There has been a recent upsurge in sectarian violence,

DHAKA: Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta is to go to parliament to seek a way out of the crisis engulfing his coalition government.A confidence vote will be held in parliament on Wednesday.Relations between Mr Letta`s centre-left grouping and ex-PM Silvio Berlusconi`s party have reached

DHAKA: Two people were arrested following the protests that greeted Iranian president Hassan Rohani’s return from the United States after his landmark phone call with president Barack Obama, media reported on Sunday.Dozens of young Islamists had gathered at Teheran airport to vent their

DHAKA: The prime ministers of Pakistan and India opened talks on Sunday on the sidelines of the United Nations, amid calls from New Delhi for greater action against Islamic militants.Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, in his first meeting with India since he swept back to power in May

DHAKA: Twin blasts near the Qissa Khawani market in Peshawar on Sunday killed 37 people and wounded at least 103 others.‘The blast killed at least 37 people,’ the top local administration official Sahebzada Muhammad Anis said, reports dawn.com.Dr Arshad Javaid, a senior official at

DHAKA: Syria will respect United Nations accords on chemical weapons, president Bashar al-Assad told Italian television station RaiNews24 on Sunday.‘We joined the international agreement against the acquisition and use of chemical weapons even before this resolution was passed,’ he

DHAKA: UN chemical weapons experts, in Syria to investigate alleged use of the banned arms, on Sunday left their Damascus hotel to carry out a new mission.The experts, who arrived in the Syrian capital on last Wednesday on their second visit in two months, headed out on board four UN

DHAKA: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is heading to the US for talks with president Barack Obama which will focus on Iran`s diplomatic charm offensive.Before leaving the US on Friday, Iran’s new president, Hassan Rohani, shared a 15-minute phone call with Obama.Netanyahu, who will meet

DHAKA: Philippine troops killed seven more Muslim rebels in gunbattles in the coastal outskirts of a southern city they were clearing of bodies, bombs, weapons and possible booby traps following a three-week standoff with insurgents who held scores of people hostage.Army troops and

DHAKA: India’s main opposition leader, Hindu hardliner Narendra Modi, on Sunday vowed a corruption-free government and a tough stand against rival Pakistan if his party wins elections next year.Modi described prime minister Manmohan Singh as weak and his government as riddled with

DHAKA: A sixth politician from Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party has been arrested after handing himself in to police in Athens.Deputy party leader Christos Pappas had been sought alongside five other MPs who were held a day earlier, reports the BBC.In all 22 people have been held

DHAKA: Syria’s government will not accept any transition peace plan that excludes president Bashar al-Assad, Syria foreign minister Walid al-Moallem told media.He spoke on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, a day after the Security Council approved a resolution that

DHAKA: A college provost says suspected Islamic militants gunned down students as they slept and killed as many as 50 in an early-morning attack in northeast Nigeria.Molima Idi Mato of the Yobe state College of Agriculture told media that the gunmen also torched classrooms in the attack

DHAKA: Explosions hit the capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region on Sunday, an international media correspondent reported, a rare event in an area usually spared violence plaguing the rest of the country.The journalist heard three blasts in Arbil.Heavy smoke could be seen rising in

DHAKA: One of Saudi Arabia`s top conservative clerics has said women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and bearing children with clinical problems, countering activists who are trying to end the Islamic kingdom’s male-only driving rules.A campaign calling for women to defy the ban

DHAKA: Amid escalating threats from North Korea, US and South Korean defence officials will meet over the next few days and discuss whether to extend America’s wartime control over the South’s armed forces, 60 years after a truce ended the Korean War.US defence secretary Chuck Hagel