DHAKA: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is back in the Middle East where he plans to propose a framework for a lasting peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, saying the time is close for tough decision-making.Kerry arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday and immediately headed for

DHAKA: Residents of the north-eastern US have been warned to stay indoors, as the region braces for a storm expected to dump up to 14in (35cm) of snow.Nearly 2,000 flights have been grounded nationwide as heavy snow fell from Illinois to Michigan in the US Midwest, reports BBC.New York

DHAKA: A powerful explosion has rocked a southern suburb of Beirut, sending smoke rising from the stronghold of the armed Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah.Sources told Al Jazeera that there were at least two casualties caused by Thursday’s blast in the Lebanese capital, which has been hit

DHAKA: China has agreed to lend Pakistan US$6.5 billion to help build nuclear power stations including a 2,200-megawatt plant in Karachi, as Beijing increases its involvement in the cash-strapped country.Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif announced the package at a briefing on

DHAKA: Egypt’s deposed president Mohamed Mursi and 130 others, including Hamas members, will go on trial on January 28 over a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.Egypt judicial sources said Thursday, reports The Straits Times.The prosecution said last month there were a total of 132

DHAKA: Officials on Thursday confirmed that all passengers on board an icebound Russian ship have been successfully evacuated after spending more than a week waiting for rescue teams to reach them in the Antarctic.The 52 scientists and tourists were airlifted by a helicopter belonging to

DHAKA: A wealthy businessman who landed his private plane on a highway in central India this week had been flying without a licence.Reports said on Thursday, according to The Straits Times.The four-seater plane landed safely on the four-lane highway in the Betul district of Madhya Pradesh

DHAKA: Tunisia said on Thursday it had arrested four militants and seized arms and explosives in the southern town of Sidi Bouzid following increased security checks prompted by fears of attacks by radical Islamists during New Year celebrations.The detentions followed the arrest of seven

DHAKA: US state secretary John Kerry was to meet Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday as he seeks agreement on a framework for final status talks with the Palestinians.The top US diplomat has faced fierce opposition from both sides to any compromise on mostly

DHAKA: As many as 13 infants have died in the government-run Malda Medical College Hospital of West Bengal in the last two days.According to sources, most of the children who died where brought in from various districts of the state were underweight from birth and their mothers

DHAKA: A senior Chinese official has been sacked in relation to a major electoral fraud scandal.The Communist Party’s discipline watchdog said, reports the BBC.Tong Mingqian, a Hunan official, was negligent and failed to handle the cases of bribery, the watchdog said.More than 500

DHAKA: The Italian navy has rescued 233 mostly African migrants from a 10 meter boat in Mediterranean waters south of Sicily as the immigration crisis that killed hundreds in shipwrecks in 2013 showed no signs of letting up in the New Year.The navy picked them up in choppy seas late on

DHAKA: At least 27 people were killed after a bus collided with a truck and plunged into a gorge in India’s western state of Maharashtra Thursday, police said.The driver lost control of the bus after the collision in Thane district, around 150 kilometres north of state capital

DHAKA: Greece’s coastguard on January 2 rescued a group of 85 undocumented migrants including women and children from a sailing ship in the southeastern Aegean Sea, officials said.‘The migrants are currently being transferred to other vessels and will be taken to the island of

Turkey is building a four-meter high wall along part of its border with Syria to try to stop people from illegally bypassing its checkpoints.The construction in the Karkamış district of southeastern province of Gaziantep will continue for some time, officials said, reports daily

DHAKA: Malaysian Islamic authorities on Thursday seized hundreds of Bibles from a Christian group and detained two of their officers, one of them said, amid tensions over the use of ‘Allah’.A court in October barred a Malaysian Catholic newspaper from using ‘Allah’ to refer to the

DHAKA: A powerful earthquake jolted southern Iran on Thursday, killing at least one person and injuring 30 others.Iranian state television reported, sasys TDS.The quake, measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, damaged many buildings and electricity lines in the southern province of Hormozgan,

DHAKA: The condition of Israel’s former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who has been in a coma since 2006, has worsened and is now critical, ‘with some danger to life’, his doctors say.Sharon, 85, is suffering from a malfunction of several organs including the kidneys, they said,

DHAKA: Americans enter 2014 with a profoundly negative view of their government, expressing little hope that elected officials can or will solve the nation’s biggest problems, a new poll finds.Half say America’s system of democracy needs either ‘a lot of changes’ or a complete

DHAKA: More than 73,000 people were killed in Syria in 2013, the bloodiest year yet in the brutal civil war that began in March 2011.A non-governmental organisation said on Wednesday, The Straits Times publishes this report on Thursday.The tally from the Syrian Observatory for Human