International

French police arrested 994 people nationwide during a fourth consecutive night of rioting over the killing of a teenager by police, the interior ministry said Saturday. France had deployed 45,000 officers overnight backed by light armoured vehicles and crack police units to quell the violence over the death of 17-year-old Nahel, killed during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb ...

Experts have recovered presumed human remains from what is left of the Titan sub that imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck, with the death of five people, the US Coast Guard said Wednesday. “United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered,” AFP reports. On board were British explorer ...

Massive crowds of robed Muslims gathered for the “stoning of the devil” ritual in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday as the biggest hajj pilgrimage since the pandemic draws to a close. From dawn, hundreds of thousands of worshippers began pelting pebbles at three concrete monoliths representing Satan, the last major ritual of an event held in severe summer heat. The pilgrims ...

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims crowded Saudi Arabia’s Mount Arafat on Tuesday, the climax of a potentially record-breaking hajj pilgrimage held in fierce summer heat. As dawn broke, groups of worshippers recited Koran verses on the rocky rise, where the Prophet Mohammed is believed to have given his final sermon,reports AFP. The ritual is the high point of the ...

The annual Hajj pilgrimage commenced early on Monday, the eighth day of Dul Hijjah, with millions of Muslims from around the world taking part for the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic. The pilgrims arrived at the Grand Mosque in Makkah on Sunday where they performed the Tawaf al-Qudum, known as the Tawaf of Arrival – the first step ...

Vast crowds of pilgrims made solemn circles around the Kaaba, the black cube at Makkah’s Grand Mosque, on Sunday as  hajj began, AFP reports. Islam’s holiest site is expected to host more than two million worshippers from 160 countries during the annual rites that could break attendance records, with 1.6 million foreigners already arrived by Friday evening. The hajj began ...

President Vladimir Putin has long profited from the actions of the Wagner mercenary group, but the mutiny led by its chief Yevgeny Prigozhin presents the Russian strongman with a challenge that could irreparably damage his authority, analysts say. During its decade-long existence, Wagner’s operations in Africa, Syria and eastern Ukraine have served Putin’s political interests, with the president appearing to ...

A deep-sea submersible carrying five people on a voyage to the century-old wreck of the Titanic was found in pieces from a “catastrophic implosion” that killed everyone aboard, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday, ending a multinational five-day search for the vessel, Reuters reports. A robotic diving vehicle deployed from a Canadian ship discovered a debris field from the ...

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping at 4:30 p.m. Monday, the State Department said, as America’s top diplomat wrapped up a two-day visit to Beijing aimed at easing soaring tensions. A Blinken-Xi meeting had been expected, but neither side had confirmed it would happen until just an hour before the talks, which are ...

The US Senate has confirmed the former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Nusrat Jahan Choudhury as the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge on Thursday. Choudhury, 46, is also the first Bangladeshi American to serve in this lifetime position. She will serve as a judge on the US court for the eastern district of New York. ...