Category: WORLD NEWS

Hope Hicks, one of Donald Trump’s longest-serving and trusted aides, today announced her resignation as the powerful communications director, in a major blow to the US President and the embattled White House amidst the intensifying inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The 29-year-old former model, though considered a political novice, was known as one of the few aides of Trump who understood his style and could influence his views. Her surprise resignation came a day after she testified before the House Intelligence Committee she testified for eight…

Read More

The search for six people still missing after a deadly landslide in Indonesia has been called off, officials said today, bringing the presumed death toll to 18. An avalanche of mud and rock cascaded down a steep slope in central Java last week, burying victims as they worked their rice fields. Hundreds of rescuers, including members of the army, police and local community, have spent the past seven days digging through the debris to find victims buried in the deadly slide. Twelve people are confirmed to have died while another…

Read More

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today that rebels in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta were responsible for ensuring that a “humanitarian pause” in the area delivers relief for devastated civilians. “Russia together with the Syrian government have already announced the establishment of humanitarian corridors in Eastern Ghouta,” Lavrov told the UN Human Rights Council. “Now, it is the turn for the militants and their sponsors to act, militants entrenched there who still continue shelling Damascus, blocking aid deliveries and the evacuation of those wishing to leave,” he added. Tuesday was the…

Read More

Protesters including senior military veterans pushed down a gate to Taiwan’s parliament building today and clashed with police as they tried to storm in over pension cutbacks. One former colonel was in a critical condition in hospital after attempting to climb a wall and falling. The protests were sparked by government plans to reform the military pension system, part of a wider pension cutbacks programme which triggered mass protests last year. Legislators passed a pension reform bill last June, cutting civil servants’ generous pension packages as the government warned it…

Read More

US President Donald Trump today said he would have run into Florida school to save the students from a gunman even without a weapon. “You know, I really believe — you don’t know until you test it — but I really believe I’d run in there, even if I didn’t had a weapon. I think most of the people in this room would have done that, too, because I know most of you. But the way they performed was really a disgrace,” he said during a meeting with governors from…

Read More

A special tribunal in Pakistan will resume on March 8 the hearing of treason case against former military dictator Pervez Musharraf for imposing emergency rule in the country in 2007. Musharraf, 74, who left the country for Dubai in March 2016 , was declared a proclaimed absconder by the court in May 2016. The court also asked the government to confiscate his properties, including a farm house in suburbs of capital Islamabad. The former president was indicted in March, 2014 on treason charges for imposing emergency in the country which…

Read More

In an unprecedented move, China’s ruling Communist Party today prepared the ground for President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely after the end of his second term in 2022 as it proposed to remove presidential term limits from the party’s Constitution. The CPC Central Committee proposed removing the clause that the President and Vice-President “shall serve no more than two consecutive terms” from the country’s Constitution, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today. The removal of the term limit, which is expected to be endorsed by the Plenum of the…

Read More

British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is facing increasing pressure to change the party’s Brexit stance ahead of a key speech on Britain’s plan to leave the European Union. More than 80 senior Labour Party figures signed a statement published Sunday in The Observer calling for Britain to remain in the EU’s single market and the customs union after Brexit. The letter states that Britain’s economy would be so damaged by leaving the EU that Labour would be unable to carry out its reforms if it comes to power. It…

Read More

At least 23 people were killed and more than a dozen wounded in multiple suicide bombings and attacks in Afghanistan today, officials said, the latest in a series of assaults in the war-torn country. In the biggest attack, Taliban militants stormed an army base in the western province of Farah overnight, killing at least 18 soldiers. “Last night a big group of militants attacked an army base in Bala Buluk district of Farah. Unfortunately, we lost 18 soldiers, two soldiers were wounded. We have sent more reinforcements to the area,”…

Read More

President Donald Trump has reiterated the idea of arming teachers and sought offensive capabilities in schools to deter mass shootings. This comes after last week’s shooting at a high school that killed 17 people. The shooting sparked an intense push to restrict access to assault rifles fuelled by student activists who demanded concrete gun control measures. “If, by the way, the bad guy thinks that somebody’s in this room with a weapon that’s going to be pointed at him, with live bullets, he’s not going into the school. It’s the…

Read More