Category: WORLD NEWS

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte today said the temporary ban on Filipinos going to work in Kuwait is now permanent, intensifying a diplomatic standoff over the treatment of migrant workers in the Gulf nation. Duterte in February imposed a prohibition on workers heading to Kuwait following the murder of a Filipina maid whose body was found stuffed in a freezer in the Gulf state. The crisis deepened after Kuwaiti authorities last week ordered Manila’s envoy to leave the country over videos of Philippine embassy staff helping workers in Kuwait flee allegedly…

Read More

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have decided to issue “strategic guidance” to their militaries to strengthen communications and to build trust and understanding, a top Indian diplomat said on Saturday, a move aimed at avoiding a Dokalam-like situation in the future Modi said his talks with President Xi focussed on diverse areas of India-China cooperation. “We discussed ways to give impetus to our economic ties as well as people-to-people relations. Other areas we spoke about include agriculture, technology, energy and tourism,” he said Briefing reporters…

Read More

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis today appealed to the Congress to urgently provide India the national security waiver, saying imposing sanctions on it under a newly-enacted law for buying the S-400 air defence missile system from Russia would only hit the US. During a Congressional hearing held by the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mattis told American lawmakers that the national security waiver should be urgently provided to India and other countries which are trying to turn away from formerly Russian-sourced weapons to avoid sanctions under Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act…

Read More

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping are all set to begin their two-day unprecedented “heart-to-heart” summit today at Wuhan, a favourite holiday spot of revolutionary leader Mao Zedong. Prime Minister Modi arrived here early today for the informal summit with President Xi during which officials say the two leaders would hold one-on-one conversations focussing on global, regional and bilateral issues. The two leaders will begin their marathon one-on-one talks after lunch at the Hubei Provincial Museum here which has a large number of state-level historic and cultural…

Read More

The informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan will provide an opportunity to the two leaders to begin a “genuine” dialogue about issues in Sino-Indian ties, top US experts have said. Modi and Xi will hold the two-day informal summit in the central Chinese city of Wuhan from tomorrow during which both the leaders will try to work out a new paradigm for the bilateral ties bogged down with a host of disputes and differences. While no major agreements were expected to be…

Read More

The US has threatened to arrest around 100 Central American migrants if they try to sneak in from the US-Mexico border where they have gathered, prompting President Donald Trump to order troop reinforcements on the frontier. Two busloads of migrants arrived Tuesday in the border city of Mexicali — which sits opposite Calexico, California — and paused for a rest stop before continuing on to Tijuana. They are part of a caravan of more than 1,000 people who set out from Mexico’s southern border on March 25. Media coverage of…

Read More

Two Dallas police officers were critically wounded in a shooting outside a home improvement store, authorities said.   Police Chief U Renee Hall said a store loss-prevention officer also was shot in the incident about 4:15 pm yesterday outside a Home Depot in northern Dallas. In a tweet about the shooting last evening, the Dallas Police Department said the officers were critically wounded. During a news conference last night at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, Hall declined to give an update on their conditions, citing consideration for the privacy of…

Read More

President Donald Trump’s escalating dispute with China over trade and technology is threatening jobs and profits in working-class communities where his “America First” agenda hit home.   The Commerce Department has received more than 2,400 applications from companies seeking waivers from the administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, which may result in duty payments of millions of dollars for larger businesses. The department has begun posting the requests online for public comment; several of the applications released so far suggest deep misgivings with Trump’s protectionist strategy, especially in areas…

Read More

Facebook today said new detection tools wielded by its counterterrorism team are quickly detecting and removing extremist propaganda for the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda. The leading social network ‘took action’ on 1.9 million pieces of IS or al-Qaeda-linked content in the first three months of this year — nearly double the amount from the previous quarter, according to vice president of global policy management Monika Bickert and global head of counterterrorism policy Brian Fishman. “Taking action,” the company said, generally involved removing “the vast majority of this content.” It…

Read More

At least 10 people have died after a man plowed a white rental van into a crowd of pedestrians in Canada’s biggest city Toronto, in what police dubbed a “deliberate” attack. The incident took place in broad daylight around 16 kilometers from a conference center hosting a meeting of G7 ministers, but officials said they had no evidence of a link to the event. “The actions definitely looked deliberate,” Toronto Police Chief Mark Saunders told journalists. Ralph Goodale, the minister of public security, added that “on the basis of all…

Read More