India’s central bank has cut its key interest rate for the fourth time this year, and by more than expected. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) reduced its repo rate to 6.75% from 7.25%, with economists having forecast it would trim rates to 7%. The repo rate is the level at which the central bank lends to commercial banks. The ...

Afghan forces have begun an operation to retake the city of Kunduz, after suffering a major military reverse when it was seized by the Taliban on Monday. The president said security forces were “retaking government buildings” and inflicting “heavy casualties”. The US said it had carried out an air strike on the city early on Tuesday. The Taliban had forced ...

Russia is considering whether to follow the US and its allies in conducting air strikes against Islamic State (IS) targets, President Vladimir Putin says. Mr Putin spoke after meeting Barack Obama on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA). But the meeting, and the leaders’ speeches at the UNGA, also highlighted splits about how to end the Syrian war. ...

Officials from several countries have said that more than 1,000 people died in last week’s stampede near Mecca during the annual Hajj pilgrimage. The last figure given by the Saudi authorities was 769. However, a Nigerian official told the BBC that more than 1,000 bodies had been taken from the disaster site to morgues in the city of Jeddah. Indian, ...

Jeremy Corbyn has told British voters they don’t have to accept that inequality and injustice are inevitable – and things “can and must change”. In his first conference speech after becoming Labour leader, Mr Corbyn vowed to create a “kinder politics, a more caring society”. But he also attacked David Cameron’s “shocking broken promises” and said Labour would “challenge austerity”. ...

Jeremy Corbyn has avoided a showdown over his support for scrapping Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons at the Labour conference in Brighton. The highly anticipated vote had been expected to take place on Wednesday. But the motion failed to get the support it needed from activists in a ballot selecting the issues to be debated this week in Brighton. Mr Corbyn ...

“Soda is a health food!” said no one, ever (well, in the past 20 years, at least). So it hardly comes as a surprise that drinking soda can have a negative impact on your body. But while most of us know soda isn’t good for us, we also don’t know exactly what happens to our bodies once we drink it. ...

Eating spicy food, especially fresh chilli, has been linked to a lower risk of death in a Chinese study, researchers said Tuesday. But they cautioned it was too early to draw a final conclusion on the potential benefits of fiery fare, and urged further research that may lead to “updated dietary ecommendations”. The study, published in The BMJ journal, collected ...

Rosalie and Oscar Bolin, pictured together here at Florida State Prison in an undated photo, married in 1996. Rosalie and Oscar Bolin have been married for 18 years. Oscar sends her love letters and hand-drawn cards practically every day, and Rosalie has kept them all. “I couldn’t bear to throw any of them away. I couldn’t. I think the art ...

If you find that whenever you touch your partner’s skin and it feels much softer that yours, then you are probably living in an illusion — apart from a little pleasure, of course. In other words, this “social softness illusion” in the mind of the touch-giver is selective to the body parts and the stroking speeds that are most likely ...