DHAKA: US president Barack Obama rejected Russian president Vladimir Putin’s claim that Syrian rebels were responsible for an August 21 chemical gas attack but, in an interview broadcast on Sunday, he welcomed Putin’s diplomatic role in the crisis.Obama, in an interview on ABC’s

DHAKA: More than 2,100 Syrian officers have fled to Jordan since the start of the conflict in their country in 2011.The kingdom’s interior minister said in remarks published on Sunday, reports The Straits Times.‘Jordan is hosting around 2,130 Syrian officers of different military

DHAKA: The US-Russia deal aimed at removing Syrian chemical weapons averted war and is ‘a victory for Syria’.The Syrian minister of state for national reconciliation Ali Haidar said Sunday, reports TDS.‘On one hand, it will help the Syrians emerge from the crisis and on the other it

DHAKA: Japan is to start the process of switching off its last working nuclear reactor on Sunday for a scheduled inspection with no restart in sight due to public hostility towards atomic power.The move will leave the world`s third largest economy without atomic energy for the second time

DHAKA: Indonesia Muslim hard-liners have resumed protests in the country’s capital and two other cities against the Miss World pageant being held in the resort island of Bali.Several hundred members of the Islamic Defenders Front and Islamic Society Forum held a rally late Saturday in

DHAKA: China’s foreign minister on Sunday welcomed the deal between the United States and Russia to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons, which headed off the prospect of US strikes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime.‘The Chinese side welcomes the general agreement between the US and

DHAKA: A female Afghan parliamentarian held captive by Taliban for three weeks has been released in a prisoner exchange.Taliban and government officials said, reports The Jerusalem Post.Fariba Ahmadi Kakar, a member of the Afghan lower house, was kidnapped on August 13 when travelling by

DHAKA: The Pakistani Taliban demanded Sunday that the government release militant prisoners and begin withdrawing troops from the group’s tribal sanctuary before they will participate in peace talks, raising doubts about prospects for negotiations.The demands came as a roadside bomb

DHAKA: A lawyer for two men sentenced to death for the fatal gang-rape of an Indian student could lose his licence for remarks that ‘reek of misogyny’.A regulatory body said on Sunday, reports The Straits Times.AP Singh, the counsel for Akshay Thakur and Vinay Sharma, has angered the

DHAKA: Thousands of villagers fled on Sunday after a volcano erupted on Indonesia’s Sumatra island spewing rocks and red-hot ash onto surrounding villages, officials said.Mount Sinabung in Karo district, North Sumatra province, erupted violently before dawn.‘More than 3,000 people

DHAKA: Philippine officials say nearly 100 Muslim guerrillas, who have held scores of people hostage for a week in the south, have been killed or captured in a push by government troops to retake rebel-held coastal communities.Philippine interior secretary Mar Roxas and other officials

DHAKA: A deal between Russia and the United States to remove Syria’s chemical arsenal was a sign of US ‘rationality’.Iran’s speaker of parliament Ali Larijani was quoted as saying by Iranian media on Sunday, reports The Jerusalem Post.US state secretary John Kerry and Russian

DHAKA: Yemen’s Al-Qaeda branch has confirmed that a US strike killed one of its leaders at the end of last month.It said in a statement posted on a militant website on Saturday that Qaid al-Dahab was killed by a ‘perfidious American air raid’ in the el-Manaseh region of Bayda

DHAKA: India on Sunday conducted a second test flight of its indigenously developed nuclear- capable ‘Agni-V’ long-range ballistic missile, which has a strike range of more than 5000 km, from the Wheeler Island off Odisha coast.The three stage, solid propellant missile was test-fired

DHAKA: French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said a Russia-US deal to remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons was an important first step and called for a political solution to address the mounting death toll in Syria.Fabius made the comments to reporters in Beijing

DHAKA: Outgoing Maldivian president Mohamed Waheed raised concerns on Sunday about the first round of the polls in which he suffered a humiliating defeat, while calling for ‘peace and harmony’ before the final vote.Waheed received just 5.13 percent of the vote in the first round on

DHAKA: US President Barack Obama has welcomed an agreement between the US and Russia under which Syria`s chemical weapons must be destroyed or removed by mid-2014 as an "important step".But a White House statement cautioned that the US expected Syria "to live up to its public

DHAKA: Twenty-seven Afghan miners trapped underground have been found dead in the northern province of Samangan, officials have confirmed to the BBC.Provincial governor`s spokesman Mohammad Seddiq Azizi said that the men had been working at the Abkhorak coal mine when part of it

DHAKA: India`s defence scientists are gearing up for the second test launch of Agni-5, the country`s most potent nuclear capable ballistic missile.Developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Agni-5 can carry a single nuclear warhead of over 1000 kg and can

DHAKA: A suicide bomber who blew himself up at a funeral for a member of a tiny Iraqi minority on Saturday killed 26 people and wounded 45 others.A doctor said, reports The Straits Times.The attack in the town of Baashiqah, just outside the main northern city of Mosul, struck at 2pm (1100