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The Israeli army has placed a female Palestinian legislator under detention for six months without trial, a lawyer for the politician said. Khalida Jarrar, a senior political leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a left-wing Palestinian faction, is being held for alleged activities in a hostile organisation, lawyer Mahmoud Hassan said on Monday. The PFLP ...

A Chinese man was caught out when 17 of his girlfriends turned up to see him in hospital after a car accident, it’s reported. The man, identified as Mr Yuan from the city of Changsha, in Hunan province, had apparently been dating all the women at the same time, and even has a child with one of them, the South ...

An explosion has ripped through a chemical plant in south-eastern China’s Fujian province, sparking a major fire. The blast occurred on Monday evening at the plant in Zhangzhou. State news agency Xinhua reported one injury. The plant produces paraxylene (PX), a flammable chemical used in polyester and plastics manufacturing. The location of PX plants in China has sparked protests from ...

Two Australian drug smugglers sentenced to death cannot challenge the president’s decision to refuse them clemency, an Indonesian court has ruled. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were the leaders of the “Bali Nine” group of heroin smugglers arrested in 2005. They are scheduled to be executed by firing squad in Indonesia soon. Australia has campaigned hard for their sentences to ...

The United States will provide aerial refueling for a Saudi-led campaign in Yemen but is not passing on precise information for air raids, a senior military official said Thursday. The US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) has been given the green light to deploy refueling tankers for the Saudis and their Gulf partners in the operation, though the refueling will take ...

Kenya is mourning 147 people killed in Thursday’s al-Shabab attack on Garissa university campus, amid questions over why warnings were ignored. Kenyan newspapers say there was intelligence information of an imminent attack on a school or university. Locals question why security was not heightened, with only two guards on duty at the time of the attack. Uganda is on heightened ...

Data from the second ‘black box’ flight recorder belonging to the Germanwings plane that crashed in the Alps suggests that the co-pilot deliberately accelerated its descent, French investigators say. They say Andreas Lubitz modified the automatic pilot system several times to increase the speed of descent. The information they recovered also confirms earlier findings that Lubitz deliberately crashed the plane. ...

At least 54 people have died and 15 are missing after a Russian trawler sank late on Wednesday in the Western Pacific Ocean near the Kamchatka Peninsula, an officer at a maritime rescue coordination center in the area said. Viktor Klepikov, coordinating captain of the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky maritime rescue coordination center, told Reuters that there were 132 people on board the ...

Thailand Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha says he has asked Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej for permission to bring an end to martial law. Martial law was put in place shortly before the army seized power last May, ousting the elected government following months of unrest. The law banned public gatherings and heavily restricted the media. Gen Prayuth said he would introduce ...

Libya’s legally installed government, the General National Congress (GNC), has removed Omar al-Hassi from his post as prime minister. Omar Hemidan, the spokesman for the GNC, said on Tuesday that the decision was the first step for dialogue among Libya’s warring factions. The GNC operates out of the capital Tripoli while the UN-recognised government, the House of Representatives (HoR), was ...