International

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi savoured an election landslide Monday, with her ruling party projected to have won a two-thirds majority in the powerful lower house for the first time in its history. If confirmed by official results, the outcome gives Japan’s first female premier a strong mandate to implement her conservative agenda and stamp her mark on the country ...

The Washington Post said Saturday its CEO and publisher Will Lewis was leaving effective immediately, just days after the storied newspaper owned by billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made drastic job cuts that angered readers. Though newspapers across the United States have been facing brutal industry headwinds, Lewis’s management of the outlet was sharply criticized by subscribers and employees alike ...

Jeffrey Epstein’s sphere of influence among businessmen, politicians and academics also reached India, with the disgraced financier spending years cultivating a relationship with a scion of the nation’s wealthiest family, according to a trove of documents released by the US Justice Department. Epstein’s messages with the once-influential Indian businessman Anil Ambani stretch from early 2017 through 2019, the documents show, ...

The US and Iran have agreed to hold talks in Oman on Friday (February 6) officials for both sides said, even as they remained at odds over Washington’s insistence that negotiations include Tehran’s missile arsenal and Iran’s vow to discuss only its nuclear program. The delicate diplomatic effort comes amid heightened tensions as the US builds up forces in the ...

A suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad killed at least 31 people on Friday, local authorities said, with a police source saying more than 130 were wounded, reports AFP. City officials said “31 people were killed in the blast” at the Imam Bargah Qasr-e-Khadijatul Kubra mosque in the Tarlai area on the outskirts of Islamabad. A ...

AAP leader Lucky Oberoi was shot dead in Punjab’s Jalandhar on Friday morning while he was leaving the Model Town gurdwara after offering prayers. He was admitted to a private hospital but succumbed to gunshot injuries, police told HT. Two unidentified men riding a motorcycle reached the location and fired 8-10 shots using two highly sophisticated weapons. Visuals after the ...

Japan votes in snap elections Sunday with polls pointing to a resounding win for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s conservatives after a honeymoon start for the country’s first woman leader. But having angered China and rattled markets in her three months so far, it is unclear what a more confident and secure Takaichi will mean for the region or Asia’s number ...

The Trump administration is withdrawing some 700 federal immigration enforcement agents from Minnesota, although about 2,000 agents will stay in place, White House border czar Tom Homan announced on Wednesday, a number the state’s Democratic leaders say is still too high. In an unprecedented surge, US President Donald Trump has deployed thousands of armed immigration enforcement agents in and around ...

President Donald Trump signed a spending bill on Tuesday ending the four-day partial government shutdown sparked by Democratic opposition to funding for the federal agency carrying out his sweeping immigration crackdown. The legislation landed on Trump’s desk at the White House after it was passed by a narrow 217-214 margin in the Republican-controlled House earlier in the day. Twenty-one Democrats ...

Iranian authorities have arrested over 50,000 people as part of their crackdown on protests, an NGO said on Tuesday, adding that fresh detentions were ongoing. Rights groups have accused Iran’s security forces of killing thousands of people in a crackdown on protests that peaked on January 8 and 9 and have since subsided. But police have also been rounding up ...