International

Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad. Photo: Courtesy Oslo, Oct 5 : The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.” The winners were named Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Congolese doctor Mukwege has been a critic of ...

Authorities in South Africa are investigating a collision between two trains that left more than 300 people injured, 32 of them seriously. The crash occurred late Thursday on the outskirts of Johannesburg when one train hit another that was stationary. Rail officials were working on Friday to clear the area.   Commuter rail crashes have been worryingly common in South ...

President Vladimir Putin was expected Friday to sign a deal in India worth more than $5 billion for the S-400 air defence system, despite US warnings of sanctions against countries buying Russian military hardware. Putin, who arrived in New Delhi late Thursday, was also set to discuss with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi further agreements worth some $3 billion for ...

Kurdish rebels on Thursday detonated an explosive device on a road in southeast Turkey, killing at least seven soldiers, a senior official said. Two other soldiers were wounded in the attack. The explosion occurred on a road near the town of Gercus in the majority-Kurdish province of Batman. Numan Kurtulmus, a deputy chairman of Turkey’s ruling party, said the soldiers, ...

Indonesia’s disaster agency says the death toll from the earthquake and tsunami that struck a central island last week has increased slightly to 1,424. National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho provided the updated figure Thursday at a news conference in Jakarta.   The disasters struck Palu and surrounding districts in Central Sulawesi province last Friday.   Nugroho said other ...

BOISE, Idaho : Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist who won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on subatomic particles and coined the phrase “God particle,” died Wednesday at 96. Lederman directed the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago from 1978 to 1989. He’s described as a giant in his field who also had a passion for sharing science, ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in India on Thursday looking to tie up billions of dollars in arms deals with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, likely irking the US, China and Pakistan in one fell swoop. The Kremlin said before the two-day visit that the “key feature” would be the signing of a $5-billion deal for the advanced S-400 air defence ...

The death toll from an earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia has increased to 1,407. National disaster agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said in Jakarta on Wednesday afternoon that 519 of the bodies had been buried.   The magnitude 7.5 earthquake and the tsunami it generated devastated the city of Palu and nearby communities in Central Sulawesi province.   President Joko ...

Moderate Kurdish candidate Barham Saleh swept to the post of president of Iraq Tuesday evening in a parliamentary vote pitting Kurdish heavyweights against each other for the first time following an ill-fated independence referendum. Saleh routed his main rival Fuad Hussein with 219 votes to 22, dealing a blow to Hussein’s main backer, former Kurdish regional president Massud Barzani who ...

The wife of Malaysian former Prime Minister Najib Razak is being grilled by the anti-graft agency for a third time over a massive graft scandal involving the 1MDB state investment fund. Rosmah Mansor smiled at reporters Wednesday but didn’t speak as she was escorted into the agency’s building. Her presence for a second time in a week at the agency ...