International

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Friday scrapped a plea agreement with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, just two days after the announcement of a deal that reportedly would have taken the death penalty off the table, reports AFP. Agreements with Mohammed and two alleged accomplices announced Wednesday had appeared to have moved their long-running cases toward resolution — but ...

US Vice President Kamala Harris’s late entry into the White House race has galvanized young Democrats, a group whose participation will be crucial if the party hopes to defeat Donald Trump in November. When President Joe Biden announced on July 21 — with two simple messages on X — that he was withdrawing from the race and endorsing Harris, 28-year-old ...

Hezbollah said it launched rockets at northern Israel Thursday “in response” to a deadly Israeli strike in south Lebanon — the group’s first attack after Israel killed a top commander earlier this week. The Iran-backed group said in a statement that it “launched dozens of Katyusha rockets… in response to the Israeli enemy’s attack on… (the southern village of Shama) ...

Kamala Harris will be confirmed as the Democratic US presidential nominee in an electronic vote starting Thursday that replaces the fanfare of in-person balloting that usually kicks off the party’s national convention. Less than two weeks after Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, his 52-year-old vice president is in full control of the party, having emerged as the only Democrat ...

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed “harsh punishment” for Israel after the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday. “With this action, the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime prepared the ground for harsh punishment for itself, and we consider it our duty to seek revenge for his blood as he was martyred in the territory of ...

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in Iran on Wednesday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said in separate statements. The Islamist faction mourned the death of Haniyeh, who it said was killed in “a treacherous Zionist raid on his residence in Tehran”. Hanieh attended Iran’s new president’s swearing in ceremony on Tuesday. “Early this morning, the ...

At least 41 people were killed and scores injured after landslides in the hills of India’s southern Kerala state, local media reported, with rescue operations obstructed after a main bridge collapsed in the region. State Health Minister Veena George said that over 70 people were injured and the Indian Express reported that many people are likely to have been washed ...

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro won reelection to a third six-year term with 51.2 percent of votes cast Sunday, the electoral council announced, after a campaign tainted by claims of opposition intimidation and fears of fraud. Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE electoral body loyal to the government, told reporters 44.2 percent of the vote had gone to opposition candidate Edmundo ...

France’s high-speed rail network was hit by arson attacks that disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of passengers on Friday, just hours before the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. A source close to the investigation told AFP the attacks were coordinated acts of “sabotage”. “This is a massive attack on a large scale to paralyse the TGV network,” SNCF ...

US President Joe Biden met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and called on the Israeli leader to swiftly finalize a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and the release of hostages. “President Biden expressed the need to close the remaining gaps, finalize the deal as soon as possible, bring the hostages home, and reach a durable end to the ...