DHAKA: The first United Nations aid flight from Iraq to Syria took off on Sunday after being delayed for several days due to bad weather.An AFP journalist said, reports daily Hurriyet.The plane departed the Arbil airport in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region around 3:30pm (1230 GMT), and

DHAKA: Pope Francis, responding to conservative criticism that his economic and social ideas smack of communism, said in an Italian newspaper interview on Sunday that he is not a Marxist but that even Marxists can be good people.Pope Francis also denied reports that he would name a woman

DHAKA: Israel allowed the entry of 450,000 litres of fuel, paid for by Qatar, into the Gaza Strip on Sunday to enable the Palestinian territory’s sole power plant to resume operations.Gaza’s 1.8 million people have been enduring daily blackouts of around 12 hours since the power plant

DHAKA: Thailand’s military offered on Sunday to help the politically polarised country hold a ‘fair and clean’ election next year, suggesting the armed forces may play a role in a vote aimed at ending protests seeking to topple the government.The idea was raised at a forum organised

DHAKA: Syrian rebel leaders said they would do all they could to protect journalists but were hampered by infighting, after international news organisations complained kidnappings were preventing full media coverage of the civil war.In a letter over the weekend, the western-backed Supreme

DHAKA: The European Union is suspending work on an Association Agreement with Ukraine after president Viktor Yanukovych failed to make a clear commitment to a later signing of the deal he ditched late last month.Brussels had told Ukraine that further discussions required a ‘clear

DHAKA: The leader of an autonomy movement in eastern Libya said on Sunday he will not order his militia troops to end the blockade of several oil-exporting ports.‘We will not reopen the ports,’ Ibrahim Jathran told reporters, adding talks with the Tripoli government to restart oil

DHAKA: Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu was among the guests allowed to attend the gravesite where former president Nelson Mandela was buried in Qunu in the Eastern Cape on Sunday.His name was called as one of the religious leaders allowed to the family burial area.Earlier this

DHAKA: Fifteen people, among them eight children, were killed in air raids Sunday on a rebel area of the war-torn northern city of Aleppo.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, reports daily Hurriyet.The Britain-based Observatory also reported that at least 28 people have been

DHAKA: Anti-graft crusader Anna Hazare’s indefinite hunger strike here for passage in Parliament of Jan Lokpal Bill entered sixth day on Sunday.‘Anna has lost 4 kg since the fast began,’ his aide Suresh Pathare told media, reports Times of India.Former Union minister Balasaheb

DHAKA: Flooding from heavy rains forced some 40,000 Gaza Strip residents from their homes, including thousands who were taken to safety in boats and military trucks.The downpour that began late Wednesday was part of a storm that covered parts of Israel and the West Bank with snow;

DHAKA: Tehran said Sunday it will keep talking with world powers on its disputed nuclear programme despite a US move to blacklist Iranian companies for evading sanctions.‘We are pursuing the negotiations seriously and of course we will give a well-considered, purposeful, smart and

DHAKA: A Japanese diplomat was wounded when armed men tried to kidnap him in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Sunday morning.Yemen interior ministry officials said, reports The Straits Times.The diplomat resisted and was stabbed by the assailants, the officials said. The kidnapping attempt

DHAKA: At least 200,000 people gathered in the Ukraine capital for a Sunday rally by the opposition protesting the government`s decision to back out of a treaty with the European Union.AFP correspondents saw, reports The Straits Times.Opposition leaders called the mass rally at noon (1000

DHAKA: Nelson Mandela’s body has been laid to rest in a family plot, after political and religious leaders paid tribute to South Africa’s first black president at a state funeral service.His widow, Graca Machel, and South Africa president Jacob Zuma were present for the private,

DHAKA: Six people, including a child and two students, were killed in two separate attacks in Afghanistan this weekend, officials said.In one incident, a car struck a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Kunar Sunday morning, provincial spokesman Abdul Ghani Mutamim said, reports

DHAKA: France’s foreign minister Laurent Fabius said he was ‘pessimistic’ about the situation in Syria and had great doubts about the success of a proposed peace conference to be held in Switzerland next month.‘In Syria, I am sadly quite pessimistic,’ Laurent Fabius told

DHAKA: A forum of political parties on Saturday chose the industry minister as Tunisia’s next prime minister, set to replace the Islamist-led government with technocrats in what’s been a faltering transition to democracy.Mehdi Jomaa, a 50-year-old independent who had abandoned a

DHAKA: South African peace icon Desmond Tutu is to miss the burial of his friend Nelson Mandela, the archbishop’s office said on Saturday, amid allegations he was not invited for political reasons.‘The archbishop is not an accredited clergyperson for the event and will thus not be

DHAKA: A bomb explosion killed several members of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali in the troubled northern city of Kidal.A spokesman for the mission said on Saturday, reports The Straits Times.‘There was an explosion this morning and the info I have is that there were