DHAKA: A Shia militia leader arrested in Iraq after his group fired mortars into Saudi Arabia has said leaders of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s political bloc will be killed unless he is released within 24 hours.Wathiq al-Battat, speaking on a mobile phone he said had been given him

DHAKA: The UN secretary-general has withdrawn his invitation to Iran to join this week’s Syria peace talks, saying he is ‘deeply disappointed’ by Iran’s statements on Monday.A spokesman for Ban Ki-moon announced the withdrawal less than 24 hours after Ban surprised the US and

DHAKA: Indian minister Shashi Tharoor has been cleared of any involvement in the death of his wife.Police sources said, reports The Straits Times.Tharoor, 57, has been cleared based on testimony by a witness who saw Sunanda Pushkar alive two hours after Tharoor had left the five-star

DHAKA: Seven bomb explosions have killed 28 people and wounded 67 in the Iraqi capital, police and medics said, as security forces battled fighters around the western cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.The bloodiest attack on Monday occurred in the mainly Shia Muslim Abu Dsheer district in

DHAKA: Two car bombs hit a rebel-held border post in the northwest Syrian province of Idlib on Monday, opposition activists and fighters said, killing at least 10 people and closing the frontier.The Bab al-Hawa crossing is held by a rebel alliance called the Islamic Front, which have been

DHAKA: Washington is in talks with the UN over the surprise invitation of Iran to Syria peace talks and expects the invite to be withdrawn.A US official said Sunday, TDS publishes this report on Monday.Iran has ‘never endorsed the Geneva I communique’ which calls for a transitional

DHAKA: China’s working-age population continued to decline last year, the government said Monday, as Beijing grapples with a demographic time bomb that is one of its biggest challenges.The country introduced its controversial one-child policy in the late 1970s to control population

DHAKA: Syrian peace talks could collapse before they even start, with the main opposition coalition bloc issuing a deadline for the withdrawal of Iran’s invitation to the talks.The Syrian National Coalition, a key player in the so-called Geneva II meeting, set to start on Wednesday, has

DHAKA: Nepalese doctors shut hospitals and clinics across the Himalayan nation, leaving thousands of patients stranded Monday, as part of a campaign to reform medical education.The national doctors’ association said, reports The Straits Times.Doctors were still providing emergency and

DHAKA: A senior Iraqi official claims Al-Qaeda fighters hunkered down in a city they seized late last month west of Baghdad have enough heavy weapons to allegedly take the country’s capital.Senior deputy interior minister Adnan al-Asadi said Monday that Iraqi forces are fighting

DHAKA: Yemeni security officials say that an unidentified gunman shot and killed a police director in the southwest city of Taiz, the latest in a series of assassinations of the country’s security officers.A gunman on motorcycle shot police director Abd Al Wali Al Turkmi in the head

DHAKA: Rosetta, Europe’s decade-long quest to put a robotic lander on a comet, has reached a key milestone.The probe, which has spent the past two-and-half-years moving through space in a deep sleep, was expected to rouse itself at 10:00 GMT, ready to send a signal to Earth.Receipt of

DHAKA: Half a dozen bomb explosions killed 24 people and wounded 58 in Baghdad on Monday.Iraqi police and medics said, reports The Jerusalem Post.The bloodiest attack occurred in mainly Shia Muslim Abu Dsheer district in the south of the Iraqi capital, where a car bomb near a crowded

DHAKA: A 21-year-old woman, working in one of the biggest malls in Kolkata, was allegedly gang-raped while returning home after work on Sunday evening.Even before the Madhayamgram gang-rape incident could die down, the latest incident, in the heart of Kolkata, has come as a blot for the

DHAKA: A court in Vietnam has sentenced 30 people to death over heroin smuggling in what is said to be the largest such trial ever held in the country.The trial, over the smuggling of nearly two tonnes of heroin, began in Quang Ninh province in early January.Dozens of others were also

DHAKA: Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad said there is a ‘significant’ chance he will seek a new term and ruled out sharing power with the opposition seeking his ouster, in an exclusive interview with media before the Geneva II peace talks.Speaking on Sunday at his presidential

DHAKA: The European Union’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Monday she hopes a new round of negotiations with Iran on a definitive settlement to a decade-old nuclear standoff could start within a few weeks.‘Depending on how things work out today, I hope that we will

DHAKA: The Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has reached out to other rebel groups in Syria to head off infighting, in an audio message posted online Sunday.‘Today, the (Islamic) state is reaching out to you to stop fighting us, to focus on fighting the nusairiyah,’

DHAKA: Indian government minister Shashi Tharoor appeared before a magistrate probing the death of his wife days after she accused him of adultery.In a case that has become an election-year political embarrassment for the ruling Congress party, Tharoor’s wife was found dead in a luxury

DHAKA: Edward Snowden may have acted in concert with a foreign power in exposing United States surveillance programs.Two Republican lawmakers suggested on Sunday, The Straits Times publishes this report on Monday.‘I think there are some interesting questions we have to answer that