DHAKA: Jordan’s King Abdullah II held talks on the Syrian crisis with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Wednesday, he said during a state visit.In a meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, the king described China as ‘a team member of the United Nations Security

DHAKA: Taliban gunmen shot and killed the head of the Independent Election Commission in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz province on Wednesday, a day after he warned that deteriorating security threatened next year’s presidential elections.Amanullah Amaan began his work during the first

DHAKA: The Syrian regime has handed Russia new materials implicating rebels in a chemical attack outside Damascus on August 21, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday after talks in Damascus.‘The corresponding materials were handed to the Russian side. We were

DHAKA: US president Barack Obama said on Tuesday that Iran’s new president Hassan Rohani appears to want to open a dialogue with the United States and that he is willing to test whether this is the case.Obama’s comment in an interview with Spanish-language network Telemundo was the

DHAKA: ‘Occupy Wall Street’ returned to the streets of New York on Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of the birth of the social protest movement.Some 250 people gathered at midday in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan’s downtown financial district, where the movement first gained

DHAKA: A Philippine police chief who was reported abducted on Tuesday by Muslim rebels has emerged free hours later after convincing his captors to surrender in a twist to a nine-day hostage standoff in the south of the country, officials said.Philippine interior secretary Mar Roxas and

DHAKA: An unpublished UN report on female police officers in Afghanistan found accounts of pervasive sexual assault and harassment by their male colleagues, according to Afghan and Western officials familiar with the report.The report, which the United Nations has circulated only among

DHAKA: An 11-year-old was allegedly gang-raped by five teenagers high on sniffing glue in India’s Guwahati town of Assam province.The police have detained the five suspects, whose parents claimed their children ‘are less than 16 years old’, reports Hindustan Times.The five allegedly

DHAKA: Fifteen seamen were in the hospital on Tuesday after a fire broke out on a Russian nuclear submarine, federal investigators said, contradicting earlier reports that nobody was hurt in Monday’s blaze.The fire started during welding works on the navy submarine Tomsk, which was

DHAKA: A car bomb exploded on the Syrian side of the main Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey on Tuesday and at least a dozen people were taken to nearby hospitals.Syrian opposition activists on the border said, reports The Jerusalem Post.The explosion occurred at a roadblock manned by

DHAKA: North Korea on Tuesday rejected the findings of a UN human rights inquiry as part of a political plot ‘fabricated and invented by forces hostile’ to Pyongyang.North Korean ambassador So Se Pyong, addressing the UN Human Rights Council, said, reports The Jerusalem Post:‘Such a

DHAKA: China’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that the government would take a serious look at a report by UN investigators which confirmed the use of sarin nerve agent in an August 21 gas attack outside the Syrian capital.Ministry spokesman Hong Lei made the comment at a daily news

DHAKA: Russia and France’s foreign ministers have disagreed over who is to blame for the chemical weapons attack in Syria.After talks in Moscow, France’s Laurent Fabius said the UN’s report into the August incident left no doubt that the Syrian government was responsible.But

DHAKA: The gap in employment rates between America’s highest- and lowest-income families has stretched to its widest levels since officials began tracking the data a decade ago, according to an analysis of government data conducted for media.Rates of unemployment for the lowest-income

DHAKA: Testimony by North Koreans exiles, including former political prison camp inmates, points to patterns that may amount to widespread and systematic violations by the state.United Nations human rights investigators said in their first report on Tuesday, reports The Straits Times.Camp

DHAKA: Syria’s decision to dismantle their chemical weapons arsenal, in agreement with the US-Russia brokered deal, in no way damages Syria’s ability to hurt its enemies.Syrian prime minister Wael al-Halki said, Israel Radio reported, according to The Jerusalem Post.According to the

DHAKA: Philippine forces freed scores of civilian hostages on Tuesday as fighting subsided in a port city where hundreds of rogue Muslim guerrillas have been battling for more than a week.The fighting, in which nearly 100 people have been killed, has highlighted lingering grievances in

DHAKA: French foreign minister Laurent Fabius is visiting Moscow to try to persuade Russia to support a UN Security Council resolution on Syria.On Monday, UN weapons inspectors said the nerve gas sarin was used against civilians on a relatively large scale in a suburb of Damascus last

DHAKA: The US, UK and France say a UN report confirming a chemical weapons attack in Damascus has vindicated their stance that Syria was to blame.The US and UK ambassadors to the UN said technical details showed only the regime could have been responsible for the attack on August

DHAKA: European lawmakers have nominated several candidates for the bloc`s top human rights prize, including Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.The European parliament said in a statement late on Monday they were among seven nominees for this