DHAKA: Chilean president Michelle Bachelet has announced plans to end a total ban on abortions in the predominantly Roman Catholic country.Bachelet has tabled a bill in Congress to legalise abortion in cases of rape or when there is a threat to the mother’s or the baby’s life,

DHAKA: Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has said he is confident that agreement can be reached with creditors over repayment of Greece’s debts.Tsipras said in a statement issued to Bloomberg news agency that he had never intended to act unilaterally.German chancellor Angela Merkel

DHAKA: Thousands of pro-democracy protesters will rally on Hong Kong’s streets on Sunday for the first time since mass demonstrations shut down parts of the city for more than two months.The afternoon march through central Hong Kong is expected to draw 50,000 people, with the police

DHAKA: A video has been released online purporting to show the beheading of Japanese hostage Kenji Goto by Islamic State militants.The video comes less than a week after news of the beheading of another Japanese man, Haruna Yukawa.Mr Goto, 47, is a well-known freelance journalist and

DHAKA: United States politicians are calling for changes to a law that allows Europeans and other foreigners to enter the country without visas, citing fears that jihadists could exploit the rules to stage attacks on American soil.The visa waiver programme, which covers tourists from

DHAKA: German chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out cancelling any of Greece’s debt, saying banks and creditors have already made substantial cuts.But Merkel told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper she still wanted Greece to stay in the eurozone, reports the BBC.Greece’s left-wing

DHAKA: India on Saturday succeeded for the first time in using a mobile launcher to test-fire a long-range missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead deep inside rival China.Although Saturday’s launch was the third test of the Agni V missile, it was the first time the weapon

DHAKA: All commercial flights worldwide could soon send out an automated signal every minute in times of distress to help rescuers find downed aircraft more easily. The new measures are in response to last year’s disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 en route from Kuala

DHAKA: Japan’s deputy foreign minister has said negotiation with the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria threatening to execute a Jordanian pilot and a Japanese journalist has become ‘deadlocked’. Local media reported on Saturday, reports The Straits Times. Yasuhide Nakayama, who

DHAKA: Greece’s new government dramatically escalated its battle with the country’s international creditors, saying it would no longer meet with European Union and International Monetary Fund auditors and rejecting fresh loans offered for February. Athens had been promised another

DHAKA: A chemical weapons expert with the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Iraq has been killed in a coalition airstrike, the US military has said. Abu Malik's training provided IS with "expertise to pursue a chemical weapons capability", a statement said. He served as a chemical

DHAKA: Eight people, all reported to be factory workers, died after a wall collapsed Saturday in an industrial plant in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu in India. The accident happened in the SIPCOT industrial area in Vaniyambadi after a waste treatment plant at the site burst open and the

DHAKA: King Salman of Saudi Arabia has announced a major cabinet reshuffle, a week after he acceded to the throne.The chief of intelligence and the head of the national security council have both been replaced, reports the BBC.Other top officials, including the ministers of defence, oil,

DHAKA: At least 54 people were killed and 55 others injured in an explosion inside a central Imambargah (mosque affiliated with Shia Muslims) in Sindh province’s Shikarpur district on Friday.Civil Hospital Shikarpur had issued a list of 49 victims out of whom 46 bodies had been

DHAKA: South African apartheid-era death squad commander Eugene de Kock has been granted parole after 20 years in jail.He was nicknamed ‘Prime Evil’ for his role in the killing and maiming of activists fighting white minority rule in the 1980s and early 1990s.Justice Minister

DHAKA: The Taliban on Friday claimed responsibility for an apparent ‘insider attack’ at Kabul airport in which three American contractors and an Afghan were killed.A spokesman for NATO’s Resolute Support mission said the incident is under investigation. Though, details of the

DHAKA: US secretary of state John Kerry has been fined a penalty of $50 by the Boston City officials for not removing snow dumped on the side street in front of his house.The city officials on Thursday slapped Kerry with a $50 fine for failing to clear the snow-clogged sidewalk on the

DHAKA: EU foreign ministers have agreed to extend existing sanctions against Russia until September.At an extraordinary meeting in Brussels, they also agreed to discuss names to add to the list of individuals targeted for EU travel bans and asset freezes.However, they did not agree on

DHAKA: Militants fired a barrage of rockets and set off a car bomb on Thursday (Jan 29) killing at least 26 people, mostly soldiers, in Egypt's North Sinai province, where security forces are battling a raging Islamist insurgency.Jihadists have regularly attacked security forces in

DHAKA: The pilots of AirAsia flight 8501 cut power to a critical computer system that normally prevents planes from going out of control shortly before it plunged into the Java Sea, two people with knowledge of the investigation said. The action appears to have helped trigger the