JAKARTA: Indonesia’s disaster agency warned yesterday of more deaths after torrential rains pounded the Jakarta region, triggering floods and landslides that killed at least 23 and left vast swaths of the megalopolis underwater. Tens of thousands of residents have been evacuated to temporary shelters in the area — home to
BANGKOK: Thailand began the year with a ban on single-use plastic bags at major stores, continuing a campaign launched by the government and retailers towards a complete ban in 2021 to reduce waste and debris in the sea. Public awareness of the risk to animals and the environment from such
SYDNEY: Australia ordered residents and tourists out of the path of raging bush fires yesterday as the country braced for a weekend heatwave expected to fan the deadly inferno. Catastrophic blazes ripped through the country’s south-east on New Year’s Eve, killing at least eight people and stranding holidaymakers. New South
Pope says sorry for slapping devotee VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis apologised Wednesday for his widely-viewed slap of a woman who had grabbed his hand as he greeted Catholic faithful on New Year’s Eve. The image of Francis slapping his way free from the clutches of the admirer was an instant
PASADENA (United States): Nasa’s Mars 2020 rover will head off for the Red Planet next year. But like Voyager, Galileo and Cassini before it, the mission’s epic journey began in a “clean room” in California. One of two ultra-sterile labs used for spacecraft assembly at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
SANTIAGO: Thousands of protesters clashed with police Friday in Santiago in a fresh round of anti-government demonstrations that erupted more than two months ago in Chile. The rally took place in the Plaza Italia, which has since October 18 becomes the epicentre of massive citizen protests against President Sebastian Pinera’s
PARIS: The head of a hardline French trade union on Friday vowed to press on with a crippling strike that has cast a shadow over Christmas celebrations, with the stoppages entering a fourth week and becoming the longest-lasting such action since the 1980s. The strike against pension reforms championed by
GAZA CITY (Palestinian Territories): Hundreds of Palestinians took part in protests along the Gaza-Israel border Friday, the last of the Hamas-backed demonstrations until March. Amid heavy rain and wind, the rallies had the lowest turnout in months, with tensions far lower than in previous weeks and no live fire by
BEIRUT: Civilians on Friday packed a road leading out of a flash point town in north-west Syria, where two weeks of heightened regime and Russian bombardment has displaced 235,000 people. Pick-up trucks carrying mattresses, clothes and house-hold appliances ferried entire families out of southern Idlib province, most heading towards safer
MOSCOW: Russia’s defence minister told President Vladimir Putin on Friday the first Avangard hypersonic missiles had been put into service, in a move hailed as a major coup for Moscow. Analysts say Russia is the first country to put into combat service intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with hypersonic weapons that
