DHAKA: Malala Yousafzai, Pakistan’s teenage activist, on Thursday was awarded the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov human rights prize.‘Today, we decided to let the world know that our hope for a better future stands in young people like Malala Yousafzai,’ said the

DHAKA: Canadian author Alice Munro has won the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.Making the announcement, Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, called her a ‘master of the contemporary short story’, reports the BBC.Her books include Dear Life and Dance of the Happy

DHAKA: A suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into the playground of a primary school in northern Iraq and blew himself up, killing 14 students and their headmaster on Sunday.Iraq police and medical sources said, reports Today’s Zaman.The attack followed a suicide bombing

DHAKA: Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Sunday for new proposals from the major powers in talks on its nuclear programme that are due to resume on October 15.Zarif said that the previous offer, made by the so-called P5+1 group at two meetings in Kazakhstan in

DHAKA: Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad has conceded making mistakes and says no side in his country’s civil war is entirely free of blame, according to an interview to be published Sunday by German magazine Der Spiegel.The respected Hamburg-based weekly reported that Assad

DHAKA: Disarmament experts from international watchdog OPCW have begun destroying Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.A monitoring official has told the BBC.The operation is being carried out by a team from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.The mission was

DHAKA: Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday he would seek talks with leaders of China and South Korea at a regional economic summit in Indonesia despite strained ties.‘I want to seize on an opportune time to exchange views’ with them, he told reporters before leaving for

DHAKA: Even as the president came to western Myanmar to urge an end to sectarian violence, security forces could not prevent Buddhist mobs from torching the homes of minority Muslims or hacking them to death, at times, unwittingly, even encouraging them.That has raised questions about the

DHAKA: Six people including two policemen were shot dead in a fierce gunbattle between Thai security forces and militants, authorities said on Sunday, after a raid in the insurgency-plagued south of the country.The clash broke out after a combined army, police and paramilitary group tried

DHAKA: China`s maritime authorities issued red alerts on Sunday, representing the highest warning for storm tides and waves as Typhoon Fitow approached land, the country`s state news agency, Xinhua, said.Fitow battered the remote southern Japanese island of Okinawa late Saturday, with

DHAKA: Four soldiers serving with the Nato-led international force in Afghanistan have been killed in the south of the country.Nato said they were killed by enemy combatants while taking part in an operation alongside Afghan forces.It did not give the nationalities of those who died, but

DHAKA: The Obama administration will press ahead Friday with tough requirements for new coal-fired power plants, moving to impose for the first time strict limits on the pollution blamed for global warming.The proposal would help reshape where Americans get electricity, away from a

DHAKA: At least 18 Afghan police officers have been killed and 13 wounded in a Taliban ambush in northern Badakhshan province, the interior ministry says.The police were in Wardooj district and on their way back to the provincial capital after an anti-insurgent operation when they came

DHAKA: Syria has begun sending details of its chemical weapons as part of a US-Russia brokered deal to make them safe, the chemical arms watchdog has said.The Hague-based OPCW added that it expected more details from Syria in the coming days and had postponed a meeting planned for

DHAKA: At least 30 soldiers have died after suspected militants launched an attack on an army camp in southern Yemen, sources say.Two car bombs were reportedly exploded in the attack at the post in Shabwa province.The government is battling al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants who

DHAKA: Emergency teams are searching for hundreds of people still missing after Colorado`s deadly floods.State officials said that more than 300 are still unaccounted for, but many are believed to be merely cut off in remote areas inundated by the historic torrential rains.Several towns

DHAKA: A Boston-area man who plotted to kidnap children, rape and eat them, was sentenced Tuesday to more than 26 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release, according to court documents from the United States district attorney`s office.Geoffrey Portway, 40, was also

DHAKA: The five permanent UN Security Council members have met in New York to discuss a resolution on making safe Syria`s chemical weapons.A resolution is seen as a key step in a US-Russia brokered plan under which Syria will disclose its arsenal within a week and eliminate it by

DHAKA: At least 16 prisoners have been killed in violence inside a jail in the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo.Fifteen inmates died in fights between rival gangs, Prisons Minister Iris Varela said. The other victim was killed in a separate incident.Some of the inmates were beheaded

DHAKA: Tony Abbott has been sworn in as Australia`s prime minister, days after his Liberal-National coalition ended six years of Labor government.Mr Abbott, 55, took the oath at Government House in Canberra in front of Governor-General Quentin Bryce.His conservative coalition won a